Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
The “Korner” as we called it, was an ice cream shop and hang out for us. It had a pool table, a pinball machine, and the video games Pac-Man and Asteroids. Square tables were covered with vinyl red and white plaid tablecloths. They had cigarette burns because we were careless teenagers instead of careless drunks. The Korner used to be a neighborhood tavern, but Jack, the owner was an alcoholic, so his wife, Marge made him give up the bar business. An ice cream shop, The Kandy Kane Korner, was born.
I hopped off my bike and I walked into the Korner. I always met Glen, my best friend, here. We never talked about it, never made plans, but we knew we could count on each other to show up. Then we would go out to one of the alleys in the neighborhood and get high. After that we would play pool all afternoon.
Glen was visiting his brother in Texas, and he wouldn’t be back for another week. I was kind of lost without him. Sometimes there was someone else to get high with and play pool, but not always.
Mary, Paula, Beth, and Patti were sitting at the same table near the jukebox. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac was playing. Beth and Patty were smoking a cigarette and appeared to be singing along with the song. Mary was laughing at her younger sister, Paula for the way Paula was dancing. Marge, who was the mother of Mary and Paula, always sat behind the counter watching TV, as she waited for customers.
Pete and I were the only guys in the Korner. When I came in, I didn’t sit with him. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. It just didn’t seem necessary, since there were so many empty tables. Seconds after I sat down, Pete asked, “Wanna play pool?”
“Sure.” As Pete racked, I thought about a day a couple of months ago when Glen was playing pool with Pete. Glen and I had just come in from smoking a bowl. Sometimes Glen became obnoxious when he was really high. He was a short, thin, guy who walked like a duck. He had red frizzy red hair combed as straight as possible with bangs to hide his receding hairline. He was seventeen, so by the time he was in his twenties he would probably be doing the combover. Pete was big for fifteen, but he hadn’t really grown into the size of his feet or head. Glen, seeing things in an exaggerated way through his stoned state, took the opportunity to remind Pete of one particular physical feature. As Pete lined up the eight ball to win the game, Glen announced, “Damn, Pete! You have a helluva big head!”
Pete missed the shot then proceeded to chase Glen around the pool table, while Glen hysterically chanted, “Bighead! Bighead! Bighead!”
I don’t remember if they ever finished the game.
I lit an Old Gold and watched the girls. I was close enough to be part of their conversation, but I just listened. They chattered in a code that replaced words with laughter and a teenage girl sign language that I didn’t understand. There were a few glances my way, which made me think they were talking about me.
Pete sank the eight ball in the corner pocket with a loud clack! I was surprised that the game got ahead of me and I lost. I rarely lost to Pete.
Mary sidled up to me. She had wide hips and always wore tight corduroys. She wore a shirt that accentuated her big tits and exposed her belly button. She had a Freddie Mercury overbite which became her. She was cute and kind, but she and I knew we weren’t a match. “Do you want to go for a walk with Patty?”
“Does she?” I asked. When I looked at her, I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. She was small and perfect. Her dark brown hair was short, just covering her ears, parted in the middle, and feathered back. My dishwater blond hair was shoulder length and parted in the middle. In our time, it wasn’t unusual for a guy’s hair to be longer than a girl’s. My glances toward her became stares. The girls at the Korner must have noticed, so they became match makers.
It was a Saturday in late August. It had been hot and humid for about a week, but today was a reprieve. It was warm but not hot. There was a pleasant dry breeze, and the sky was a storybook blue.
Patty and I walked down the sidewalk to Powell Park. My bike was to my right towards the street. She was on my left. I had a sense that she was going to be my girlfriend, and that she wanted me to be her boyfriend. Any damage we had incurred from our childhood was there, but neither of us had much baggage from boy/girl relationships. As adults we discover there is betrayal beyond childhood, that there are people who claim to love you but will crush your soul and abandon you. We didn’t know much about this yet.
“You should be a lawyer,” she said.
I thought that was a strange way to start a conversation. “What do you mean?”
“You use big words.”
“You mean I have a big vocabulary?”
“Right. Just like that,” she said and smiled self-consciously.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer. I want to be a writer.” I was surprised that I had divulged this. It wasn’t a complete secret, but it was privileged information.
Don knew. I told him when we were walking down an alley smoking a joint last summer. We were having a dreamy high conversation. “Cool. You want to write books?”
“Science fiction.”
“Really?” He had a big grin, and he stared at me with bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah.”
As he took a hit from the joint, he nodded and said, “I can see you being a writer.”
At that point he became my best friend, because he didn’t question my dreams.
“You’re a writer?” Patty turned toward me slightly. I could tell she was intrigued and impressed, so I immediately felt good about myself. Then reality set in, and I felt like a fraud for a moment. I hadn’t written much of anything at all.
We sat on the wood bleachers next to each other. Both of us lit a cigarette. I had not smoked pot today, and I didn’t feel like it right now which was unusual. For me, it was more normal to be high, than not. I knew we were going to kiss, and I felt more excited than nervous, but the moment wasn’t here yet.
“I want to read something you’ve written. What do you write about? Do you write about us at the Korner?” Patty’s level of excitement made me feel like a rockstar. I had never thought about writing about the Korner, or anything in my life. I wondered if I ever would someday. Writing about something that happened at the Korner seemed too easy, maybe made too much sense. Would it be worth writing about it?
“Yeah, I’ll let you read something sometime.” Lately, I had been working on a short story called The Empath. It was about a young beautiful woman who was an empath in a futuristic dystopian world. I didn’t have much on paper. What I did was probably shit anyway.
“What’s an empath?” Patty asked sheepishly.
“It’s someone that feels what others feel.”
“Hmm, I think I’ve known some people like that.”
Our eyes met, and I believed this was going to be the moment. As I moved to kiss her, I saw four guys on bicycles speeding towards us. The collective charge of bikes with their rattling frames, squealing chains, and grinding pedals got my attention first, as they jumped the street curb onto the sidewalk. Before I knew it, they had dropped their bikes and bounded up the bleachers surrounding us. I knew who all of them were, and I didn’t like any of them. Jack Mahoney was the leader. He was toughest. I had one small run in with him earlier this summer. I was riding my bike to the Korner, and he was on the sidewalk to my left. His house was about three blocks in the opposite direction, so I didn’t know why he was here. I purposely avoided passing his house no matter where I was going. He yelled for me to stop. I could have kept riding, but fear, which is often irrational, made me believe that Jack could have chased me down, and the consequences for trying to run away would have been more dire than whatever reason he wanted me now.
I pulled up to the curb where he was standing. He was only wearing a pair of faded denim shorts. He had a golden tan down to his feet. With his perfectly quaffed and feathered reddish brown hair, handsome face, and muscular body, I could see why he was an alpha. “Got a comb?”
I pulled one out of my back pocket. I was glad I could abide. Jack stared at my small black plastic comb and sneered. “Nah, probably has lice.”
Humiliated, I slipped the comb back in my pocket. “I don’t have lice,” I said. I washed my hair every day. I brushed it until it was shiny. I took pride in my long hair.
He turned around and walked back to the house from where he came. I took off immediately. My heart was racing, and I felt a rage. I hated that guy.
Jack Mahoney sat above and behind me on the bleachers. The other three sat next to each other to my left. Hermit sat right beside me. I didn’t know whether he got his nickname from behavior or looks. His frizzy hair and droopy wild eyes could have been why they called him Hermit. He was about my size, but a little shorter. Sheephead sat next to him. He was blond, tall, thin, and had a narrow head like the Sheephead fish. Butch Volden sat on the end. His feathered hair was as perfect as Jack’s. He was also quite good looking.
“What’re you kids up to?” Jack asked. “Playin’ kissy face?”
The others laughed, Volden began the chant, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” The others chimed in, but it was a garbled mess, and as they attempted to spell, a cloud of alcohol breath permeated the air.
I was ready to take Patty by the hand and walk away with her, but as I stood up Hermit punched me in the jaw. It stunned me for an instant, but I had been punched before. I had been in a few fights, and my dad was not averse to giving you a shot to the head when he was pissed off. All in all, I knew what it felt like to get hit. The feeling was no surprise to me.
When I recovered, I immediately saw red, and I cracked Hermit in the mouth. He reeled back and rolled off the bleachers onto the ground. I didn’t think I hit him that hard. He sat up and put his hand to his mouth, as blood seeped between his fingers and dripped onto the dirt.
“Whoa!” Butch got up. He was Hermit’s older brother.
“Damn, boy!” Jack appeared angry but impressed. He stepped off the bleachers. I didn’t realize it at first, but he was strategically placing himself to block my path to my bike.
“Why did you do that?” Sheephead asked me.
Are you kidding me?
Jack looked at him and said, “Idiot.”
I would have laughed, but I was in fight or flight mode. Neither state made room for humor. At this moment I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I didn’t want to leave Patty alone with these goons but staying and getting my ass kicked wasn’t a reasonable option either.
I took Patty’s hand and stepped down the bleachers.
“Where the hell you goin’?” Butch pushed me in the back. I stumbled but didn’t fall and spun around to face him. My body was vibrating, and my hands were clenched into fists. I could tell that my reaction startled him. I could tell he was unsure and afraid.
“Why do you guys have to be such assholes?” Patty asked.
“Shut up, whore!” Butch yelled and stepped up the bleachers in retreat.
When I turned back around to leave, Jack was standing between me and my bike. I had let go of Patty’s hand when Butch pushed me. She kept walking and was now on the sidewalk beyond Jack. At a fairly safe distance she waited for me. “Just leave him alone, Jack,” she called.
“Just leave ‘em alone, Jack,” Sheephead mocked her in a whiney effeminate voice.
“Wanna fight?” Jack asked. It didn’t look like he wanted to, but he had to challenge me.
“Only if I have to,” I said. Which meant, if you make me I will for the right to walk away with Patty. After a long moment, Jack gave me just enough room to slide by, even though he could have forced the fight. I knew he would have broken me. He knew he wouldn’t have walked away unscathed.
“Kick his ass, Jack!” Butch took one step forward. “If you don’t, I will!”
“Yeah, man! Me too!” Sheephead spit.
“Shut the hell up! None of you could kick his ass!” Jack pointed his finger at them and they quietly shriveled.
I picked up my bike and walked towards Patty. Her eyes were teary, but she fought it back. “You okay?” she asked.
I cleared my throat and said, “Yeah, you?”
She didn’t say anything, but she clutched my left arm and rested her head against it. We walked this way for a block, and when we turned the corner, out of sight of the park, I stopped. She looked up, her face close to mine, and we kissed. When we separated our faces were still close together. She caressed my cheek. “You’re going to have a bruise. Does it hurt?”
“It’ll be fine. Everything’s fine.”
“It is.” Patty smiled.
As Patty and I walked back to the Korner I wondered, “How I would write about the violent day we fell in love?”