Pins: A Novel (9 page)

 
“That’s nice.”

“What are you asking me all this for? What, you got a sweetheart you not tellin’ us about?”

Sure. He weighs 130, most days. We’re a perfect match.

Ever since a seventh-grade coatroom epiphany with Giovanni Rodriguez, who was a bit of an exhibitionist, Joey had a rather complicated idea about desire, if not anatomy. Some of what he heard or read seemed so misinformed he didn’t like to think about it. The news articles were good for facts, or what people argued as facts, but he had so few real pictures, including an image of a guy in a leather jacket, with a handlebar mustache, a pink tutu. He’d seen it in a card shop in Newark. All they showed on the tube were guys in dresses or people screaming in the streets or dying of AIDS, or else it was cartoons, screaming fags. Hated it.

Of course he did have his Melissa Etheridge tape, and the k.d. lang tape. They were nice, and there was Martina, and Madonna, who was called a lot of things, but she was definitely on his side.

That guy on
Melrose Place
was a bit of a dope, he heard, but the one time Joey got to watch the show, he wasn’t on it much. “Too much sex and violence,” his mother said. “You should be studying.” He’d heard about Pedro Zamora on
The Real World
. Joey had swiped a picture of him, another of Dean Cain from a magazine before his mom threw it out. It lay in his little box with some other pictures, souvenirs.

Wrestling magazines, comics and his drawings were all he had to look at when looking at himself wasn’t enough. Joey ripped out pages from a pile of magazines in the bathroom at Dink’s, a page with a picture of Marky Mark in his underpants on a stage. In the article he said something about performing at gay clubs, sayin’ “It was cool.” Joey thought his music was cool too, remembering the Saturday he spent with Dink, learning the moves from the “Good Vibration” video. He could even do the move of bridging backward, flipping his legs up to land standing, but after they knocked over a lamp Mrs. Khors told them they had to do that in the yard.

Joey was fourteen when he saw two men kiss.

A news story on AIDS or gay rights or something. Fortunately Joey sat in the living room in Newark, with Aunt Lilla asleep at her babysitting post, so he could watch closely. He saw crowds of them, like at a party. It confused him. Why did they go in clusters like that? Why did they all live across the Hudson and over the bridge?

He’d seen a news story showed athletes preparing for a sports event like an Olympics, but not. Women ran a marathon, guys playing basketball, swam, played soccer. Drag queens flashed pom-poms.

The news guy blabbed away, but Joey heard himself gasp. Two men finished wrestling. A ref held up the winner’s hand. The two men hugged, which wasn’t unusual.

But then they kissed. Smack, right on the lips. The two men waved at the audience like they were Mickey Mouse and Pluto at Disneyland. He had to hold back a laugh, a warm feeling in his chest, not embarrassed, but hopeful. Someday, he was going to get a ticket, go there.

He chewed on carrots, a fingernail, watching his mother prepare dinner, waiting for a light to come in from the kitchen window, give him a vision of how to tell her why she shouldn’t be expecting grandchildren any time too soon. Although nervous about it, he felt as if he’d accomplished something with Dink. Something was going to happen. He wanted to share the feeling, but ended up talking about anything else.

They talked about his finicky diet changes since he’d begun wrestling again.
 
She was bewildered when he pushed away cookies. “I never thought I’d have a son who asks for more spinach,” she joked.

Mike’s pouncing Glob Monsters entered. He waved them off. “I need carbohydrates, too, like in pasta, but I can’t have fat stuff, and sugar just…um, it depletes me.”

“Depletes you,” she echoed.

“Yeah.”

“Systems depleted,” Mike said in a robot voice.

“Okay. No sugar.” She made a mental note.

She seemed content, talked while she cooked, filling him in on her latest version of terror and scandal, how bad things were in the city. “Aren’t we lucky we moved out here to Little Falls, before anything bad happened, what with all those awful things going on in Paterson, Newark and, God forbid, New York, with all those sick people, homeless bums, maniacs shooting people dead on trains? I used to get so worried about you kids.”

Even after a bath, the leg spasm had switched to a single tight knot.
 
His body told him to stretch, even if he was missing practice. He checked the source of his lingering injury by comparing it with the muscle chart on his wall by his closet.
 

“Semitendinosus muscle.” Pulling down his sweat pants, he fingered his right hamstring, as if by finding the particular muscle he might poke out the shred of pain. He looked down at his thighs, which had thickened in the last few years. When had they become so hairy, like he was another person down there?

His hand crept further up, groinward, when Mike barged in, growling like an old werewolf.

“Because, Brother, when you cross that line from my world–”

“What the hell are you–”

In his own voice, “It’s Hulk Hogan,” then, “When you cross that line from my world, brothah, the dark side of visionaries, you’re gonna get beat up real, real bad.”

Joey yanked up his sweats. “Get out.”

“No.” Mike jumped on his bed, rapt by the presence of his older brother, but feigning disinterest.

Joey walked over to his desk, thinking once again about what he might do someday, showing Mike a thing or two, what he probably really wanted to catch him doing. He’d been almost caught too many times.

On the nights when Mike slept with him, in the old house in Newark, while quietly massaging himself off under the covers, Joey had wanted to simply flop it out in the dark bedroom, as if he didn’t care what Mike saw. What was the mystery? He must have known. He should just show him.

But then he got a sick feeling low in his gut, figured Mike would probably tell on him a minute after he did it. It felt weird to think of Mike like that, since he looked so much like just a smaller version of himself, the dark wavy hair, the thin face, the brown eyes “the girls went wild over.”

“You got a booboo?” Mike mocked.

“Strained my hamstring.”

“I’m gonna see you wrestle next time.”

“No, you can’t. It’s past your bedtime, wiener.”

“Da said I could.”

“How you know he’s even goin’?”

“Said so.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“I’m goin’.”

“Next time, wiener.”

“Show me a pin.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“I’ll tell.”

“Tell what?”

“I know something.”

What could it be? That he had his pants down? The way Mike snuck up on him, always spying, it could have been anything. It was probably the drawings. But how could his little brother get up inside his closet to find them? He’d have to check later. For now, he didn’t want to know what it was.

“Sure you know somethin’. Assume the position.”

Mike jumped off the bed to the small carpeted floor, waited. Joey stood over him, ready to start. He lightly grabbed Mike’s arm, careful not to bump his groin against Mike’s butt.

“Readeeee, wrestle!” He put so little pressure on the frail limbs, yet he held him down. Mike grunted below him.

He gently showed him some moves, gave him a few pointers for when he would start Kids Wrestling, then the two lay on the floor as Mike tried prying him over, to no avail. Joey reached over, tweaked Mike’s nose, then tickled his belly. The squeaky laughter made him feel good, almost a man.

“Hey, what’s that? You made a mess.” Mike pointed to a wet line dribbling down Joey’s dresser to the floor.

So that’s where that first blast went. “Uh, I sneezed.” Joey stood.

“You gotta cold?”

“It’s pecker snot.”

“What’s that?”

Mike was shoved to, through, out the door. “You’ll find out in a few years.”

9

Hunter tugged his WRESTLING OR MY GIRLFRIEND? T-shirt up, wiped off a faceful of sweat, watched, waited, then threw his hands up at the lost cause before him.

“Ely, just. . .take his arm down. Lambros, at least try to bridge.”

Unlike other sports, with a hard wooden floor for basketball or the bitter cold and rain of football fields, a sense of comfort filled the wrestling room. Sounds were absorbed in the private sanctum.

People rarely came to watch, except maybe the yearbook photographer every now and then. He was almost invisible. The principal came by a few times to talk to Coach Cleshun and Assistant Coach Fiasole, watch the team’s progress, until he got uncomfortable in his suit. Basically the wrestlers were a clan unto themselves. Other people didn’t know the way it worked. Other people didn’t know.

Except the quitters. The banner hung high along the walls of the wrestling room, displaying the Colts insignia, a leaping young horse. But what never left the practice room was a long white banner with a list of the 1993-4 names, including those who dropped out. Little lines cut through their names. Unlike the plaques and trophies, this was a list no team player ignored. It hung as a warning; Quit and everyone will remember you.

So when Anthony had been out for a few days (stomach flu, he’d said) dragged in practice upon his return, guys razzed him. Wimp. Pussy. Fag. The usual stuff.

Coach Cleshun shouted another demand that all the guys wear clean T-shirts for practice.
 
The reek factor was rising.

Some wore shorts with jock straps, others the little Lycra shorts they all had to wear under their singlets in competition. Some wore kneepads. Brett Shiver wore the Jason mask since he had a cut on his eyebrow.
 

The boys had divided into groups of four. Everybody was supposed to go through short sit-outs into reversals, with the bottom guy going for an escape. Joey watched as Dustin flattened Anthony.

“Lemme show ya,” Hunter hissed. “Neech, get on me.”

Joey knelt down, wrapped his arm in a similar position. Hunter lay on his back. Joey nestled his head over Hunter’s shoulder, heard his voice next to his ear, humming into his chest. “Ya gotta press up from your hips. . .” Hunter’s gut shoved up against Joey, pulling him up off the mat. “Arch on your feet and your head–”

Hunter slow-motioned a bridge, poured Joey around his stout column of an arm until Joey lay shoulders down, legs high, his arms folded like a pretzel around his face, Hunter’s tie with his legs threatening to crunch Joey’s knee in just a hint toward permanent injury.

But there wasn’t pain. Hunter carefully restrained his weight, the other boys having watched them move with exhausted fascination. Pulling away, Joey secretly felt the warm trade of sweat, how it clung to his shirt after they moved apart, smelled of chicken soup.

For wrestle-offs, which took place last, if there was time, Joey immediately went to Dink, even though he knew Dink would win. He waited beside him, sitting outside the circle, while other guys stretched and watched the smaller weights go first.

“Here we go again,” Dink muttered.

Joey couldn’t help but feel sorry for Anthony when he competed against Lamar Stevens. They bounced around the mat like two rubber bands, then got caught up in holds like one tightly bound pretzel, Lamar’s dark brown legs entwined with Anthony’s pale limbs. It hurt just to watch his legs get twisted in such strange positions. No wonder he always got hurt.

Anthony got one of his legs caught around the grip of Lamar’s leg, his other leg pulled back under Lamar’s arm, his ass up high, exposed.

“Inkwell! Inkwell!” Raul Klein yelled. It was their joke term for a stack, the position which left the loser butt up, arms pretzeled, most important, shoulders to the mat: pinned.

“Hey, we’re up.”

Joey fought all he could, thinking, not exhausting himself. It took Dink longer to pin him. Joey was getting better.

Cleshun and Fiasole went light on the guys, since it was still early December, told them to do only five laps around the school. Most of the football guys had become thick, overweight actually. Their bodies needed to be heavy for self-defense. But for wrestling, they had to get all the padding off. Even Buddha Martinez had to lose enough pounds so he could at least get down to some sense of what Coach Fiasole called “muscularity.”

Joey loved the sound of the word, how Coach Fiasole led them around the weight room, showed them how to think of their bodies as machines.

Joey had drawn a cartoon of the biology chart of the human body, like his own muscle chart at home. Muscue Larry, a guy with exposed body parts, veins, showed off his temporals, lats, deltoids like a new suit, a map of body parts, pink and purplish muscles the countries, tendons the border crossings.

Coach Cleshun asked a few guys to stay after practice, those that were being ranked.
 
Joey relaxed. He wasn’t in such a rush to get out of there, without all the guys yakking, hooting. He padded naked across the clammy floors, his towel in his hand.

Bennie stood alone in the shower room, his wide V of a back shiny under the water that fell off the round shelf of his butt. Joey at first went to a far shower, then decided he could handle it. He turned on a nozzle one to Bennie’s left. Bennie turned to face him, grinned.

“Hey.”

“You’re gettin’ good.”

“Thanks.”

As they talked, Bennie turned, as if testing Joey, held his head under the water, arching back, turning his hips to reveal his cock slowly peeking around the corner of his hips. Joey had to see it, the way Bennie’s stomach hairs quivered like river moss under the water that rolled over the ridges of his abs and off his cock like a tiny waterfall. Bennie brought his hand down for a quick scrub with soap, tugging It a few times longer than usual.

Joey turned away, smiled inside.

HOSTILE? DESTRUCTIVE? PRONE TO VIOLENCE?

HAVE WE GOT THE SHOE FOR YOU.

Below the Asics poster, other posters of Gable, Smith, Baumgartner, Schultz, Ventura –all the greats– covered the walls. Off to the side, Coach Cleshun had hung a team photo of himself from his college wrestling at Penn State.

Guys liked to joke about how geeky he looked, his glasses covering up most of his face, his little head nearly hidden by another guy in the row in front of him. Cleshun liked to take the ribbing, Joey thought, to help the little guys like him believe even they could succeed.

Walt, Bennie, the Shiver brothers, Hunter, Dink and Joey crowded into Coach’s tiny office or leaned in his doorway. Coach had posted the results of the previous week’s seeding meeting. Coaches from around the region had met to vote on each others’ players, determine the boys’ rankings, which were not only an often accurate estimate of a wrestler’s previous and potential record of where the boys were considered for that season, but who to beat, where they would go. Rankings had a powerful effect on serious athletes and a big ego boost to the hot dogs.
 

The boys listened while Coach stood, paced, telling tall tales of the other coaches’ bragging. Fiasole rocked back and forth on the two back legs of the desk chair.

“So then, so then, the Paterson coach says, ‘My one-seventy-seven can lift an ox. He grew up on a farm and gets up at dawn to bench press oxes.’“

Everybody laughed.

“Oxen,” Dink corrected.

“Smartass.” Coach smiled, beaming. “Then the Wayne coach goes, ‘Well, my boy can bench press a gorilla. He is a gorilla. Mattera fact, we got him imported from Africa!’“

The boys blasted out in laughter again, hanging on Coach’s every word.

“So I said, ‘Well, my heavyweight recently visited Japan, where he beat Godzilla twice in Sumo! ‘ Man, it was such a bunch of, ‘I got bigger balls ‘an you, my team’s better ‘an yours,’ I tell ya, the testosterone was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And this little spaghetti man,” Coach nodded to Joey. “Once I brought out his records from the tough-fightin’ city of Nerk. . .” A few more chuckles. Dink tugged Joey’s ear. “I tole them you were a hit man with the Mafia, and they better rank you, or else,” Coach made his hands into guns,
 
“Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang!”

The guys shoved each other, chuckling.
 
Joey didn’t mind that they made fun of his being Italian. That was how they said he was theirs.

“I don’t want you men to get all high and mighty with the other guys. They’re still your teammates, even the first year guys. I want you to teach them what you’ve learned.
 
Got it?”

Heads all nodded, obedient, silent.

“Now, I want you all to remember. I don’t want any of that stupid weight-cutting action. You boys wanna move up or down, you do it natural. If you feel you’re growing out of your weight class, you can, at any time, challenge your teammate in your chosen weight class for a varsity duals position.”

More silence. Through the wonders of the order of wrestling, the weight classes, the pecking order seemed to have been achieved, for the time being. Joey didn’t even move.

Gaining weight meant moving up. Moving up meant challenging Dink.

He would never do that. He would starve first.