The Clancys of Queens (13 page)

Some of the kids who go to MS 172 live in apartments above the storefronts on Jamaica Avenue, or the Glen Oaks town houses. Others have small houses in Bellerose or big ones in Hollis Hills. But none of that means much, because it is Queens in 1991. And so, no matter where you're from, how much money you've got, or whether you are more inclined to guillotine a girl with a chain-link fence or join the chess club, everyone worships at the same altar: hip-hop.

Freckle-faced white girls wear their hair in slick-backed ponytails. Baby-faced black boys peek out from low-brimmed leather baseball caps. Chinese girls rock brown lip liner. Israeli boys wear Hilfiger button-downs, their gold-charm Hebrew
Chai
symbols hanging in the vee of their still-hairless chests (substitute Irish four-leaf clovers, Italian horns, Boricua flags, Jordan jersey number 23's, Yankee pendants, ankhs, Ganeshas, Shivas, or
Om
s, accordingly). And everybody has at least one Hugo Boss sweatshirt—if not a real one, then a pretty good knockoff.

Nadira Gonzales, president of the student council and lead in this year's production of
Oliver!,
otherwise channels Mary J. Blige in a Nautica puffy jacket, door-knocker earrings, and Timberlands. And Renita Samuel, who just a year ago, back when we were in PS 133, wore saris or matching polka-dotted short sets and jellies, now sports Knicks jerseys, Jordans, and a feigned bad-bitch scowl. For these most recent Indian immigrant kids, the transformation from acclimating American elementary school students to LL Cool J–wannabe middle school students especially stood out: some, like Renita, nailed the look; others, like Amul, missed by an inch that might as well have been a mile—he came to his first day of sixth grade at MS 172 in jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of piss-poor rip-off Nikes called Shooters, and he took hell for it.

As always, Dad took me sneaker shopping on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill before school started that year. He had just moved into his first proper house barely across the Nassau border in the suburban town of Valley Stream, marking the first time in his forty-one years he had lived outside of Queens County. He didn't know of a sneaker store in his new neighborhood, but even if he had, Dad was of the old-school New York variety that would drive clear across the city to avoid spending money at a place where he didn't know the owner's name, his or her kids' names, and how they took their coffee.

We stopped at Marlowe Jewelers first. We weren't in the market for jewelry that day, or most other days we went shopping on Liberty, but Dad was close friends with everybody who worked there—“Slim,” “Cha-tze,” Dennis—so, from as early an age as I can remember, we always popped by with coffee and donuts and spent a half hour shooting the shit.

I so loved going to Marlowe's with Dad that it's preserved in my memory as clearly as Grandma's kitchen on 251st Street, or our old little house in Broad Channel: the way the glass jewelry cases and motorized, spinning watch displays rattled every time the elevated A train passed overhead; the deep, terrifying barks of Kiki (their German shepherd guard dog) whenever a new face came through the shop door; the nail-studded bat mounted on the back wall (if it weren't for the
LOUISVILLE SLUGGER
logo, you'd swear that thing had survived the gladiator contests of the Middle Ages).

While Dad chitchatted with Slim and Dennis, I eyed the nameplate necklaces that half the girls in my sixth-grade class already had. I waited until we were about to leave to point them out to Dad. “Christmas?” I asked. I got a “Maybe,” which was more than enough to light me up.

We shot a wave to Manny in the window of G & R Electronics as we passed by, and then we headed into the sneakers shop. Dad got straight to talking baseball with Myron, the owner, while I tried on pair after pair—Ewings, Nike Air Maxes, Bo Jacksons, Filas, all-white high-top Reeboks with gum soles—staring at my feet in the little floor mirror for five, ten minutes apiece, then walking circles around the benches in the middle of the shop, then sidling back to the mirror, until Dad couldn't take it anymore, “For the love of God, Scooter, just pick a damn pair! I don't get you kids and this sneaker shit these days.” I went for the Reeboks, then pushed my luck. “Eh, Da, any chance we could check if Sukon's got the Shockwaves in before we go home? They said they were coming this month.”

For all my wannabe-tough-city-kid style, I was only eleven—young enough to still be collecting G.I. Joe figurines, old enough to know, after seeing that fight on my first day of sixth grade, that I needed to make more friends at MS 172 if I wanted to avoid getting my ass kicked.

Lynette Solina wore the unique dual crown of prettiest and toughest girl in our whole sixth-grade class. And even though Esther and I still faced no competition for the “weirdest” label, midway through that year Lynette had turned our best-friend twosome into a threesome.

We sat together every day in the cafeteria and spent the entire first week of our friendship seeing who could keep a Cry Baby Extra Sour Gumball in her mouth the longest, and talking about Jimmy, Lynette's infamous first boyfriend from earlier that year. Jimmy was technically in seventh grade, a year ahead of us, but he had been left back so many times, he was fourteen (to our eleven). And for reasons no one understood, one day he walked into the yard with a BB gun and shot two kids in their asses.

We knew that the recess fight riots at 172 were a daily thing, but this episode still took the cake. And even though Jimmy was immediately expelled, we panicked that he might come back anyway. So we hypothesized on what Lynette should do if he did. Esther, true to form, i.e., petrified, ventured: “You didn't ever really break up with him, Lynette, right? Maybe you can't! It might make him mad! What if he comes after you!? You're stuck!”

“Yeah! You probably have to marry him now, just so he doesn't shoot you, too!” I chimed in, trying to be funny and act tough, though the truth was, I was scared shitless. But Lynette didn't seem fazed in the least: “You kiddin' me? I'm done with him. I'll tell him right to his face! Just let him try 'n' shoot me!”

She wasn't faking it. Lynette was a take-no-shit, eleven-going-on-eighteen, middle-school, Italian American version of Tina (Rosie Perez) in
Do the Right Thing
. But it wouldn't take long for me to see that she was as caring as she was fierce, just like the rest of the Solinas.

Lynette's parents grew up in the Pink Houses—a housing project in East New York, Brooklyn—but made their way to a co-op apartment in Hollis, Queens, just before Lynette and her two younger sisters were born. (Whether in East New York in the '70s or in Hollis in the '80s, the Solinas were one of the few Italian American families living in predominately African American neighborhoods.) John, Lynette's dad, managed the produce department at the King Kullen supermarket. Antonetta, her mom, worked part-time as a receptionist in a doctor's office on Hillside Avenue and part-time selling real estate but still made time to cook three-course Italian dinners most nights and full-on feasts on the weekends—beautifully arranged platters of antipasto, tray after tray of eggplant parmigiana, fresh pesto pasta, perfectly crisp breaded chicken cutlets, and homemade zeppoles for dessert.

The Solinas' dinner table on a Saturday night was the microcosm to the macrocosm of Queens—the most ethnically diverse, and delicious, place in the world. In addition to their family of five, Antonetta always extended an open invitation to their neighbors, their Brooklyn family, a bunch of Lynette's sisters' friends, and—by the end of sixth grade—Esther and me. The dinner table was right inside the front door to their apartment, which they kept unlocked for a good four hours on Saturday night, and every few minutes a new face poked in and everyone screamed, “HEY!,” and then we all got up and jockeyed around the chairs until we were all eating elbow-to-elbow.

Even my mom got in on the action one night. And, soon afterward, she and Lynette's mom became as close friends as their daughters were. Antonetta and Carmella—seven syllables of pure Brooklyn Italian joy. And with that, the Solinas became, and remained, a second family to me.

By the start of seventh grade, Lynette, Esther, and I had anointed ourselves the L.E.T. crew—gel-curling our hair and tweezing our eyebrows together in our rooms after school, listening to Wreckx-N-Effect's “Rump Shaker” and Tupac's “I Get Around” on repeat. We weren't then, nor would we ever be, bad enough to actually graffiti our tag on brick walls, but we did take a can of black spray paint to a hidden back corner of my closet one day, spraying
L.E.T. Crew, L.E.T. Forever!
and
L.E.T.
inside a lightning bolt.

Throughout our years at MS 172 we were always more chess club than chain-link chokers—but we did catch one beef, with another group of girls, at the end of seventh grade. It never came to actual blows, if for no other reason than because Lynette was so willing to throw down. “What? You want to fight? So do it! Either you stop talking shit and just hit me, or we dead it! Enough with this in-between shit!”

Lynette fought fire with fire. Esther fought it by avoiding eye contact in the cafeteria. I fought it in a cloak of bad-girl style—I got the nameplate necklace, a name ring the next year, and continued to drive Dad bat-shit with my sneaker obsession. If all else failed, though, both Esther and I fought fire by standing back at a safe distance—which just meant, throughout the eighth grade and for pretty much the rest of our lives, anywhere behind Lynette.

The summer before I started high school, when I was fourteen, my mother planned a trip that—unbeknownst to me but not to her—was less a vacation than a pilgrimage. As with similar missions, Mom expected ours would bring about an awakening in me, although not one of the more typical spiritual or religious variety but, rather, the sexual type. Ergo, our destination wasn't Nazareth or Bethlehem or the remote burial site of some obscure Christian martyr, but the grand sepulchre of all sexual inhibitions, the mausoleum of many a Midwestern boy's feigned interest in the NFL, that enormous tomb of all formerly closeted selves: the Great Gay Motherland of West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Mom was taking me to visit a living relic, otherwise known as her only lesbian friend, to see if basking in this friend's lavender light might make me realize what Mom had long since guessed was true: that I was one, too.

I had heard this friend's name mentioned over the years, but it wasn't until we were on the plane that she told me anything more substantial. It was Mom's freshman year at St. Joseph's College back in Brooklyn when she first met her—a sharp, rebellious, alcoholic, soon-to-be-heroin-addict, giant butch built of tough Rockaway Irish stock named, of all things, Rosemary. (That is not exactly how Mom described her, but that is exactly what she was. I know because, well, it takes one to know one, but—more blatantly—that's how she described herself. In fact, soon after we met, Rosemary told me that even being seen with an out butch lesbian in a Catholic school in 1960s Brooklyn was something none of the other girls was willing to do—Mom was her first, and only, college friend.)

As it turns out, my dad had met Rosemary in the Rockaway bar scene years before either of them met my mom, and Rosemary was the matchmaker on that fateful night at McNulty's. (Back then, as was the case years later, when Dad started hanging out with those few gay guy couples at Gregory's, the only qualification you needed for his friendship was the ability to handle your drinks and his jokes.)

By 1994, the year we flew across the country for a visit, Mom and Rosemary had been friends for over two decades. At some point in the last half of those twenty-plus years, Rosemary had sobered up and moved to L.A….though I doubt in that order. She now had a job at “a shop.” That seemingly inconsequential, but truly pivotal, tidbit was the last thing Mom said to me as we were de-boarding the plane. She mentioned it in passing, as in, “Dolly, Rosemary has to work today—and she works at a shop—so after we land, we'll go straight there and hang out till she gets off work. Okay?” I barely recall this detail registering with me, until, that is, our airport taxi pulled up in front of said “shop.” After that point, I would never, ever forget it.

As Mom fiddled around in her purse to pay the cab driver, I just kept reading and rereading the shop sign, flashing back to Mom referencing “a shop,” then rereading it again. I didn't entirely grasp what the words meant, but even so, I was pretty damn sure that whatever happened in the next ten minutes would be more interesting than anything that had happened in my fourteen years leading up to it. I blinked one more time to make sure I had it right. Yup, the sign read:
665: ONE STOP FROM HELL.

I recall the next five seconds like an out-of-body-experience, as if I were hovering over myself on Sunset Boulevard looking down on it all: there I am, looking every bit the 1990s Queens teenage baby butch in my baggy jeans, all-black Raiders Starter jacket, and fresh Nike Air Trainer Huarache high-tops, feet frozen to the sidewalk, eyes like saucers. Then there's Mom, in her fanny pack and travel sweat suit, breaking into a run and jumping into the arms of this huge woman with a tattoo of a hypodermic needle and a metal spoon on her forearm with an
X
over it. “Rosemary!” Mom confirms.

As they twirl around and around in their bear hug, I finally work up the guts to take a few steps forward and sneak a peek into the shop window—turns out,
665: One Stop from Hell
is not a Californian pseudonym for the Department of Motor Vehicles. It is a sex-toy store, specifically the kind of sex-toy store that boasts a full rack of black leather harnesses and a hat stand draped with horse whips. (Despite the advanced education I was getting walking around Manhattan's West Village with my friends some Saturdays, it would be another decade before I'd learn that the term
S&M
could be used here.)

Rosemary gives me a quick shoulder pat and an “Eh, kid,” then takes my luggage, wheels it into the store, parks it underneath a shelf stocked with foot-long black dildos, and turns to ask me if I'm hungry.

Though I can no longer speak, I manage to shake my head,
No
.

Mom, on the other hand, with a big ol' smile, says, “I could eat!”

I see them talking to each other, and then to me, but my brain is too overloaded to make meaning of the sounds; it's as if every last ounce of my cognitive functioning has been dedicated to deciphering the purpose of the many hundred silicone items of every conceivable shape and size looming over me from all directions. So instead of comprehensible language I hear,
“Meepy, meep're meep meep meep
across the
meep meep meep
sandwiches.
Meep meep
right
meep, meep
sit
meep!”
And before I understand what is happening, Mom and Rosemary walk out the shop door. Only after they're gone and I'm alone in the pristine silence of the sex-toy store am I able to process Mom's words: “Dolly, we're going to run across the street to get sandwiches. We'll be right back. Just sit there.”

I slowly turn to the spot my mother was pointing to ten seconds ago—a high stool behind a glass case, on top of which is the cash register and displayed inside of which are neat rows of things that many years from now I will google to discover are called nipple clamps, ball stretchers, and pinwheels.

I open the case, pull out a pinwheel (it's like a pizza cutter but with pins instead of a blade) and run it up and down my arm. And then, I hear a familiar sound.
Ding-a-ling!
I look up toward the shop door with two simultaneous thoughts: 1)
You really don't expect one of those classic, cutesy doorbells in a shop like this—a little Bridgehampton candle store, sure, but here?
and 2)
That is definitely NOT Mom and Rosemary.

Standing in front of me now is a couple in business suits, and they are very serious and focused, which may be why they don't realize that the person they're asking, “Where can we find the puppy cages?” is fourteen years old and has zero idea why they are asking that question here.

We stare at one another for the longest three seconds of my life. I imagine they're thinking something along the lines of:
I know that butch lesbians tend to look younger, what with their little-boy fashion sense, but this one takes the cake.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking:
Maybe they don't have Petco in California?

Finally, they give up on the mute at the register and decide to go look for the cages on their own—665 isn't exactly Macy's, so they find them without much trouble. The moment they do, the woman drops down onto all fours and crawls inside one, while the guy, still standing, says, “Whattaya think of that, bitch?” She woofs; he says, “We'll take it.”

As they walk out the door, he adds, “I can't exactly bring it back to the office, ha-ha, so we'll come by after work, and I'll pay for it then.” And thank God for that, because I also don't know where to find the gift wrap.

Naturally, I head over to see this “puppy cage” but on my way get quickly distracted by what appears to be life-size G.I. Joe gear—
wait, are those gas masks?
One entire wall of the shop is dotted with hanging gas masks. And right away I feel the need to try one on, to see exactly what I would look like as a Cobra Viper.

I take down a mask, pull it over my head, tighten the straps, and walk over to the mirror to get a look at myself. After two, maybe three, steps, I realize I can't breathe. I try to get it off, but it won't budge. I'm pulling and pulling, fidgeting with the straps, twisting the cartridge in front, and nothing. I try to wedge my finger under the seal adhered to my face. Nothing. Now I'm in a full-on panic. I start whipping around the shop, arms flailing, trying to gasp, searching for something I could use to pry or smash it off with, but really I'm just going in circles until I'm in a total tailspin, looking like a postapocalyptic version of the Tasmanian devil trapped in a sex-toy store.

I make it to the mirror and start banging my head into it, hoping that will break the gas mask open—no such luck. Then, with what feels like my very last breath eking out of my nose, at long last, I hear it…
ding-a-ling!
—and my mother and Rosemary burst through the shop door.

They charge toward me, throwing their sandwiches into the air. Everything starts to go into slow motion, as I spend what I imagine are my few remaining seconds of consciousness in this world, struck not by the fear of encroaching death, but by the insanity of the fact that the very last thing I might ever see would be from behind the lens of a gas mask that's suffocating me in front of my mother and her butchy best friend in the sex-toy shop the latter manages for a living, which I was left alone to run, at fourteen, all within the first hour of my first visit to L.A.

I don't mean to spoil the surprise, but I survived. In fact, I didn't even lose consciousness—with a lightning-fast, two-handed twist-and-pull combo move, Rosemary shelled that gas mask from my head as if my skull were a peanut. Somehow, in a remarkably short amount of time, Mom, Rosemary, and I just moved on, chitchatting away as if 665 was our favorite café, as if nothing had ever happened, as if this hadn't been the single strangest sixty minutes of my entire life. But while I leapt seamlessly from meeting the puppy cage couple to the typical teenage talk of school and friends, I was later to learn that Mom and Rosemary were sweating buckets, shocked that they had dodged this particular bullet and managed to steer things back on track.

It would be years before she told me, but it turned out that my mother had ZERO idea that Rosemary worked in an S&M shop until the very second the cab that had brought us there pulled away from outside 665. She had written down the address but not the name of the store and was so focused on paying the taxi driver that she had yet to read the sign until the cab took off. Rosemary had sworn up and down that she'd told Mom the kind of shop she worked in and didn't question it much when Mom said we would come there from the airport, because she had it in her head that I was a lot older than I was.

Regardless, the second I walked off to peer into the shop window, Mom and Rosemary, still hugging, were sharing panicked whispers, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Mom had a split second to make a tough decision: her whole plan was to introduce me to a lesbian friend, to show me that she had one, and thereby impress upon me that it was perfectly okay for me to be one, and she couldn't figure out how to say, “Actually, we're not going into my friend's workplace, even though we are standing right in front of it,” without also really confusing me and making the whole start of our trip supremely uncomfortable. More than anything, she deduced, it wasn't worth foiling her entire plan just to avoid fielding a few questions about sex toys. So she decided to go in the complete opposite direction and pretend this was the most normal establishment in the world. She leapt at the chance to grab those sandwiches to powwow with Rosemary on her decision, never imagining that both the puppy cage and gas mask incidents would happen within the mere ten minutes they were gone.

After Rosemary's shift was over, she took us to a kitschy family restaurant called The Stinking Rose, where every item on the menu was garlic-based, even the ice cream. We three sat there sharing a bowl, taking turns lifting the tiniest possible spoonfuls into our mouths and wincing, looking not unlike any of the other adorable families around us (but with one hell of a better backstory).