All American Boy (18 page)

Wally's flipping through the phone book, his oily fingers staining the pages. Who's the sexy guy on Oak Avenue with the black Corvette? Jimmy something. Jimmy Genovese. Yeah, Genovese. He runs his finger down the page until he finds the number. His cock is still fucking his fist, trembling to come off. He presses Jimmy Genovese's number. The tones made by the push buttons on the phone have come to excite him. So do the rings before anyone picks up.

But no one answers. His cock can't take anymore. He shoots anticlimactic cum on the mirror. He lies back exhausted.

Wally watches as his cum runs down the glass. White water separates from the thicker goo. He stands finally and wipes it off with Kleenex.

Fuck them when they won't talk
.

Outside his father is mowing the grass in the front yard. It's been several weeks now since he came home for good. Something happened on the ship. Wally doesn't know what exactly, but his father gets drunk a lot now, and shouts at the television set all the time, cursing President Carter and the goddamn A-rabs.

“What happened?” Wally has asked his mother. “Something happened, didn't it?”

“He's just not going back to the ship for a while.”

“You mean he's home for good?”

“For a while, Walter.”

Something happened. Something bad.

But something good, too: There was no more talk about Wally joining the navy.

He sits on the front step now and watches the yellow sweat roll off his father's back. Some of the neighborhood boys are throwing a football in the street. It's Sunday.

His father cuts the mower. He leaves it stranded in the middle of the yard and walks over to Wally, mopping his forehead with his T-shirt. His body is hard and toned, with a patch of gray hair curling between his flat, defined pectorals. Several brown moles above his father's right nipple form a little crescent pattern. Wally has come to notice these things, things he never paid much attention to before.

“Why are you inside on such a nice day?” his father asks.

“I'm outside now.”

“Take over cutting the grass. I need a drink.” His father presses his hand to his sweaty chest then puts his fingers to his mouth. “Too much salt. We eat too much salt. Your mother puts salt in everything.”

Wally waits until his father has gone inside before heading out to the lawnmower. He starts it up, but it quickly chokes on the grass, then sputters and dies.

“Turn it over,” his father calls from the front steps, drinking a glass of lemonade. It's probably spiked with vodka. “Pull out the grass that's caught.”

Wally hesitates. He's afraid that the machine will kick back into gear, severing his hand. But he obeys. He flips the lawnmower over and begins pulling out clumps of grass in his hands. He sneezes once, twice, then three times.

His father has come up behind him. “What's the matter?”

“I'm allergic to grass,” Wally tells him.

“You're not allergic to grass.”

“Mom took me to the doctor. He said I was.”

“Aw, go on, get out of here.” His father shoves him aside to reclaim the lawnmower. Wally looks up to see the boys in the street are laughing at him.

And worse.

They're laughing at his father.

Something happened. Something bad
.

High school changes everything. Once, Wally had many friends. Freddie and Michael and Philip and Steve. The teachers all liked him. He was going to
go far
. a straight-A student, a golden boy.

Not anymore. Now Wally's sullen and quiet and the teachers yell at him for never raising his hand in class. And in the entire school, he has just one friend, a geeky Jewish kid named David Schnur. His old friends from grade school went on to become cool, especially Freddie Piatrowski, who's on the junior varsity basketball team and has a girlfriend. Those two things alone are enough to make you cool. Wally has no such résumé.

But in the last three weeks, things have gotten even worse—ever since he and David went to see
Saturday Night Fever
at Cine 2 out on north Washington, the boxy little movie house that opened after the Palace Theater closed down. They each paid their three dollars and seventy-five cents and found two seats way in back, settling in to watch the kid from
Welcome Back, Kotter
. They had no idea of what was to come, any clue of the power the movie might wield. Yet from its very first frame it ensnared Wally: John Travolta strutting down a Brooklyn street to a throbbing Bee Gees soundtrack. The way he walked, the way he moved, the way he was dressed, the way he looked from side to side. The movie
did something
to Wally. Something weird. While David sat there shoving handful after handful of buttery popcorn into his mouth, Wally sat transfixed in the dark, unable to take his eyes from the screen.

The images burned themselves into his brain: Travolta in his black briefs shouting “Attica! Attica!” Travolta in those tight polyester pants. Travolta in the backseat getting a blow job. It didn't matter that the blow job was from Donna Pescow. What took hold of Wally's mind was the fact that all Travolta's mean, tough friends were
watching
him get it—mean, tough, handsome guys who said “fuck this” and “fuck that” and wore beautiful, shiny, tight-fitting clothes, topped off with gold jewelry and hairspray. Wally could practically smell their cologne through the screen. Something about the combination—the tough and the mean with the beautiful and the sweet—did something to Wally. Something weird.

He hasn't been able to get the movie off his mind since.

Since seeing the film, Wally has started styling his hair with a blow-dryer, something his father makes a lot of grumbling about. Extra electricity. Besides, it's girly. But Wally wants his hair to look like Travolta's, feathered back and shiny.

“Would ya just watch the hair?” he's said to David in a bad imitation of Travolta's Brooklyn accent. “Ya know, I spend a long time on my hair.”

Last week, Wally pressured his mother to take him to Grant's to buy him some clothes. Usually she only bought him clothes in late summer, before school started. But even though it was spring now and school had only a few months left before summer vacation, Wally insisted he needed new pants, because none of the ones he had fit him right anymore. His mother acquiesced, not wanting Wally to make a fuss in front of his father. So down they trooped to Grant's, where Wally picked out the tightest, stretchiest, shiniest pair of burgundy slacks he could find, and threw in a silky green shirt with a yellow floral pattern as well. His mother was a little reluctant about the shirt, thinking his father wouldn't like the additional expense, but in the end she went along with it. Wally was thrilled by his new outfit. Trying the clothes on, his heart was thudding in his chest. He couldn't wait to wear them to school.

“Hey, John Revolting,” Freddie Piatrowski teased, but somehow the taunt didn't bother Wally. He liked being John Travolta. He liked wearing the clothes. They felt good on his body. They excited him.

That's when he started making the phone calls.

His father's still snarling over the sputtering lawn mower when Wally walks off. He cuts through the group of boys in the street, ignoring their laughter. He should've taken his bike, but he has no idea where he's going, no plan. He's just walking. He heads down the cul-de-sac out onto Washington Avenue. Before long he's getting close to Main Street.

He knows it's wrong. Obscene phone callers—he's read about them in “Dear Abby”—are sick. Weirdos. And now he's one of them. But he can't help himself. He'll see a guy he thinks is sexy and then he just
has
to call him. He has to tell him he wants to fuck him. Then they'll say “fuck you” back and it will make Wally shoot.

At least that's how it usually works. Sometimes they just hang up. Wally hates it when that happens.

He used to worry that the police could track these calls, but not anymore. The old cop shows had made it look so easy. But
Starsky and Hutch
is far more realistic. You have to be on the phone for a long time before they can trace you, and your phone had to be rigged up with some gizmo from the police department. If Wally got them talking quick, got them to say
fuck
, he could hang up before no more than two or three minutes had elapsed. No one would ever catch him.

“Hello, Wally.”

He looks up. He's been walking quite a while, all the way down Washington and crossing over to Main Street. He realizes he's passing by St. John the Baptist Church, next door to the school where Wally once attended, before his father was home all the time, before Wally lost all his friends, before he was an obscene phone caller and was still an All American boy.

“How have you been, Wally?”

At first he can't see anyone. The voice makes him uneasy, like it's God talking to him. But then he sees the priest standing in the doorway of the church, surrounded by little old ladies. It's Father Carson, and he's looking straight over at him. Wally gives him a small wave.

Wally was baptized in this church. In grade school, his class would troop next door for Mass on every First Friday and whatever holy day popped up in the calendar. But now the church seems an alien place to him, a place of shadows and whispers. Wally was a Catholic only when his father was home from the ship; when his father was away, his mother would take him to the Lutheran church. Now there is no church at all. Since he's been home, Wally's father has made no effort to get up on Sunday morning and head off to Mass.

“Wally,” the priest is calling, “would you come over here a moment?”

Father Carson's a young man, no more than thirty-five, with wavy brown hair and green eyes. He's kind of like Travolta's older brother in
Fever
, but more handsome. He's saying good-bye to very small Italian ladies in black dresses who are coming out of Mass. Wally heads over slowly, watching as the priest makes the sign of the cross over one of the ladies' Rosary beads.

“It's been a while since I've seen you,” Father Carson says, turning his full attention now to the boy. “How is your father?”

“He's fine.”

“Tell him we miss him at Mass.”

“I will.”

“And how are you?”

Wally shrugs. “Okay.”

“How's school going?”

“Okay.”

Father Carson makes a sympathetic face. “I guess you'll be leaving Brown's Mill soon, going off to the military academy.”

Wally's not sure why the priest is talking to him. Has there been talk? Have his high school teachers reported back to the nuns at St. John's?
What's happened to Wally Day? You said he was such a good boy
.

Wally looks up into Father Carson's face. The priest smiles at him. His eyes are set very deeply into his face.

“Wally,” Father Carson says, “anytime you wish to talk, about anything, you're welcome to call me.”

The boy makes a little sound. “Why should I need to talk to you?”

“I'm not sure. But if you want to talk, I'm here.” The priest puts his hands on Wally's shoulders. “Sometimes you just want somebody to talk to, somebody you can trust.”

Wally likes the feel of the priest's hands on his shoulders. He feels a tingling in his shoulders that goes all the way down his arms and his spine. He looks down at Father Carson's black pants. They're tight and very shiny. Wally feels his cock stir in his jeans. He wishes he could fall to his knees and bury his face in the somber black cloth of the priest's crotch.

Wally pulls away, hurrying down the street.

“Please call me,” Father Carson says after him. “Please call me if you need to.”

Three days after seeing
Saturday Night Fever
, Wally made his first obscene telephone call.

“You want to suck my cock?” he breathed into the phone.

“Who is this?”

“You want to suck my cock?”

Click. Dial tone.

Wally frantically pushed the buttons again. Freddie Piatrowski picked up the phone, irritated now.

“Or I can suck yours,” Wally offered, disguising his voice.

“Who the fuck is this?”

He said fuck!
Wally pumps his cock hard and fast in his fist, lubed with Vaseline.

“I
said
,” Freddie growls, “who the fuck
is
this, faggot? I'll beat your fucking head in, you fucking faggot.”

“Ohhhh!” Wally shouts, shooting a cannonball of spunk onto his mirror. He slams down the phone.

He said fuck. Oh, man, he said fuck!

That fuckin' faggot, we'll beat his fuckin' ass, huh, Tony? We'll beat his fuckin' ass
.

Some of these chicks think if I fuck 'em, I gotta dance with 'em
.

Travolta was always saying “fuck.” In one scene, he said, “Fuck the future,” but Fusco told him no, that you can't fuck the future. “The future fucks you,” Fusco said. “It catches up with you and it fucks you if you aren't prepared for it!”

Wally had turned to David Schnur in the cafeteria a week later and asked, “What do you think he meant, that the future fucks you?”

“I dunno.”

“You think it means that if you don't know what's coming, it can fuck you up for life? Keep you trapped? Keep you from ever being happy?”

“I don't know what you're taking about, Wally,” David said, eating his Cheetos.

“Don't you ever think about it? Don't you ever have dreams about it?”

“About what?”

“
Saturday Night Fever
.”

“No,” David told him, unwrapping his Ring Ding.

“Well, you're a fuckin' liar.”

“Why should I dream about it?”

“Because you're a faggot.”

“I am
not
,” David protested.

“Don't lie to me,” Wally said. “I could tell by the way you were looking at those guys on the screen. You wanted to have sex with John Travolta. And Joseph Cali. And the other guys. Admit it.”