Still Pitching (13 page)

That same summer
, 1953, the Dodgers beat the second place Milwaukee Braves by thirteen games. Their 105-49 record was the best in team history—and their 208 home runs were the second highest total in baseball history. It was the fifth consecutive season they'd led the league in home runs; and for the eighth consecutive year they were first in stolen bases. If that wasn't enough, Brooklyn compiled a 285-team batting average; Carl Furillo won the batting title with a 344 average, and four other players hit over 300. And yet in the World Series the Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games. It was the fifth consecutive year that the Yankees had won the world championship, and the seventh time in a row they'd beaten the Dodgers. According to the press, the Dodgers' 0-7 Series record was a major embarrassment. Until they beat the Yankees in the World Series they'd continue to be judged as also-rans and under-achievers.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that such a talented, determined team was peaking at the same time that the Yankee teams of that era were winning one championship after another. Any other decade, Brooklyn would have already won several championships. As the game was teaching me, the world worked in strange ways.

Regardless of their track record in the World Series, or perhaps even because of it, my bond with the Dodgers got stronger and more intense. Like me, they still had something to strive for, something left to prove.

Before eighth grade had
even begun, I was thinking about coach Sullivan and next June's tryouts. My plan for the school year was to stay focused on that goal. I'd work at the pharmacy after school, and I'd keep in shape by lifting weights and running on the beach. And to atone for last spring's lousy grades, I'd spend more time studying. I also promised myself that I was done brownnosing the guys in the clique.

On paper, it was a perfectly good scheme, so long, that is, as I could avoid all other distractions. But there was as much chance of that happening as there was of my father becoming a millionaire. What I'd neglected to factor in, of course, were girls and sex.

Over the summer
, I turned thirteen. My voice got deeper, and hair started to sprout on my chest and face. I still hadn't shed all my baby fat, but I'd grown at least a half inch. Clearly, the hormones were starting to take over. When I wasn't playing ball, girls and sex were constantly on my mind. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't hide from all those erotic thoughts and stirrings.

Now that I was back in school, everywhere I turned—at lunch, in class, at recess, on the bus—there was an unrelenting barrage of gossip about who was making it with whom. All of a sudden, even zit-faced losers like Sandy Kalish and Jerry Rosenbaum were starting to brag about getting “serious nookie.” Who from, God only knows.

On the bus one day I overheard Frank Pearlman telling the other guys in the clique that Rosenbaum's and Kalish's faces looked like “close-ups of the moon.” I winced. A piece of me identified with those two guys. Whatever else I might be on the ball field, to the guys in the clique I was the same social outcast that I'd always been.

As much bragging as I heard, it seemed unlikely that many eighth graders were “going all the way.” The only hard evidence of this was the newborn babies that some of the greasers' girlfriends had delivered over the summer. Still, if the rumors were true—and how would you ever know, anyway?—the class studs like Chuck Weiner, Dickie Stern, and Sammy Black were making it with the fast seventh grade girls. Even if it was all smoke and mirrors, it couldn't help but affect me.

At school I continued to have sexual fantasies about Cindy Levine. And she continued to act like I didn't exist. So I retreated into fantasy and voyeurism. That fall, I discovered
Playboy
, a brand new men's magazine that featured color photos of half-naked women. The first issue had a full-color nude picture of Marilyn Monroe. I also rooted out my father's French deck when he wasn't home. Plus, I was still swiping Ramses and Trojans from the pharmacy stockroom—in the unlikely event I'd ever get to show them off to fellow pretenders. And like every other horny eighth grader, I thumbed through a dog-eared copy of
Love without Fear
, seeking out the descriptions of sexual intercourse—as disappointingly clinical as they were. Nothing, it seemed, could satisfy my curiosity and fascination.

As far back as
grade school, I'd had a crush on Diana McCaffery, my next-door neighbor. When we were kids, we used to play hide-and-seek and ring-a-levio in my backyard. But after she started Catholic school in seventh grade, I'd catch a glimpse of her only from time to time on her way to school.

I couldn't help but notice that Diana's figure had changed dramatically. Only a year ago she was a skinny, tomboyish girl with blonde pigtails. The guys in the clique used to make fun of her behind her back, calling her “the carpenter's daughter; flat as a board.”

Almost overnight, however, she'd developed pear shaped, pointy breasts. And when she started wearing tight skirts and stockings, I'd sit out on the front stoop watching her walk up the block on her way to the bus stop. I couldn't stop staring at her curved hips and perfectly rounded rear end. I began to imagine what she looked like without any clothes on. To my surprise, it wasn't long before I'd get to find out.

One warm night in mid September, I was studying upstairs in the spare bedroom. I was just finishing up when I saw the light go on in Diana's room. Our houses were separated only by a narrow alley, and on that unseasonably mild evening her window was wide open. Diana, wearing a pink terrycloth bathrobe, was pacing the room barefoot, drying her long blonde hair with a towel. My heartbeat quickened, and my pulse began to race. I just stood there, frozen in place, staring out the window.

I flicked the light off and knelt down in front of the window, hoping she wouldn't notice that the room was suddenly dark—and praying that no one in my family would come in and catch me spying.

As she undid her sash, I held my breath and bit down on my thumb. Then with a causal shrug of her shoulders, the robe slid to the floor. An urgent, pulsing sensation started to well up in my groin. It spread to the pit of my stomach and traveled up through my chest.

For a long, slow moment, Diana stood in the center of the room facing my window. She was completely naked. Was she smiling at me, or did I just imagine it? Did she know I was spying on her?

She pivoted and slowly walked over to the light switch. An instant before she got there, she turned her head back toward the window. Maybe she did know, and she wanted to give me the full show.

The knot in my throat choked off my saliva, my cheeks and ears burned, and my entire body thrummed with excitement. I felt like I was in the grip of an invisible force. I knelt there, chin in hands, elbows on the windowsill, transfixed by what I was seeing. I was intoxicated and, at the same time, powerless. Diana was fully exposed; and yet it felt like
she
was the one in charge. All she had to do was flick the light switch and the show was over.

I wanted to stop time and etch that image into my memory—so I could call it up any time I wanted to.

For weeks, I couldn't get those images off my mind. At least the Catholic kids could confess to the priests. Who could I confess to? My rabbi, who I hardly knew? Certainly not guys my own age. I was afraid to talk to my father. He'd never brought sex up to me before. My mother wasn't an option either. I was too concerned that she'd think I was some kind of pervert or weirdo.

I tried to put Diana in the back of my mind. But even if I wanted to stop thinking about sex, I was reminded of it every day in school and on the bus—and every time I went to Miss Mencken's third period Art class.

We started hearing
the scuttlebutt about Miss Mencken back in seventh grade. Everyone agreed that she was a head-turner: petite, trim, in her mid twenties, with long, reddish blonde hair, Kelly green eyes, and soft, clear skin, with just a hint of freckles at the bridge of her nose. Each day she wore eyeliner, a tight wool sweater, and a knee-length straight skirt. Sometimes we'd spot her in the halls between classes. Whenever she talked to Mr. Adler, the handsome Social Studies teacher that the eighth grade girls were gaga over, Miss Mencken would arch her back ever so slightly and nervously twist her hair around her index and middle Angers.

Sammy Black, the class blabbermouth, claimed that Adler and Mencken were making it after school in Adler's classroom. Sammy also said that he'd copped a look up Miss Mencken's dress one day during free hour. He was passing the Art room, and she was sitting at her desk facing the door with her legs crossed. “Miss Mencken's skirt was riding up so high on her thighs” Sammy said, “that I could see her underpants.”

“Yeah, what color were they?” Pearlman chided.

All the guys in the clique tried to play it cool—acting like it was no big deal. But the second the bell rang in second period Social Studies, all four of them, with me in pursuit, jumped up and ran down the hall. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of Miss Mencken before she draped her long blue paint-spattered smock over her clothes. That's how pathetic we were.

Since the incident in kindergarten, I'd always dreaded Art class. But not this one. I looked forward to the times when Miss Mencken would walk around the room and look at our work. When she'd lean over my right shoulder, her left breast would brush lightly against my arm. The first time it felt like a mild electric shock. Sometimes, she'd take my hand and guide the crayon over the drawing paper. Her gentle touch and the scent of her perfume and shampoo made me light-headed and giddy. My throat constricted, my mouth got dry, and I'd begin to break out in a sweat. For the rest of the hour, I was too goofy with lust to concentrate on drawing.

As a last resort I went back to books, looking for anything that could explain these unceasing desires and confusions. But nothing in the public library had the answers I was looking for. The books and magazines that might have offered some clues were sequestered away in a special section that was forbidden to anyone under eighteen.

So I remained in a kind of limbo, sometimes thinking I was just an ordinary kid with a large imagination and overactive hormones, other times believing that I was one of the few boys my age who didn't have a handle on these things. The more confused I became, the more curious I was to pursue this fascination, which was already becoming a minor obsession.

The most popular girls
our own age were already dating high school guys. And so most of the eighth grade boys had to go out with seventh grade girls. I'd pretty much resigned myself to being dateless until one evening in late September when I happened to run into Art's daughter, Karen, at her father's candy store. I was buying a pack of Lucky's for my mother, and Karen was filling in while her father was over at Sam Cahmi's deli, schmoozing with the horse handicappers.

I remembered Karen from the days when I hung around the candy store with Manny's gang. She was in sixth grade, working behind the counter after school—making tuna and egg salad sandwiches, and egg creams and black-and-white ice cream sodas.

I knew she had a crush on me. Sometimes after she got off work Karen would hang around and then walk with me up to my street. Then there'd be this awkward silence right before I'd turn to head home. It was like she was waiting for me to ask her out or put a move on her.

Back then, though, I didn't pay much attention to her. She was like all the other sixth grade girls—childish and giggly. And I wasn't at all attracted to her. I thought she was carrying around too much baby fat. But who was I to talk? Whenever I looked in the mirror, I saw a short, chubby kid with freckles and a crooked nose.

Now, a year later, here we were back in her father's store. Karen was dicing onions and green peppers for the sandwiches. I couldn't put my finger on it, but now that she was a year older she looked more alluring somehow. Was it her eye shadow? The ponytail? Her form-fitting sweater? Had she lost weight?

Karen wasn't plain looking or pretty. She had the kind of baby face that an aunt or grandmother would call “sweet.” I didn't feel the same kind of overpowering desire for her that I did for Cindy Levine or some of the popular girls. Yet I'd been hearing stories about Karen since seventh grade. She and Connie Tarpoff used to hang around with Chuck Weiner and Dickie Stern, two arrogant rich guys from Neponsit who were reputed to be heavy hitters with younger girls. I couldn't help but wonder.

The story making the rounds these days was that Karen gave that creep Sammy Black a hand job in the back of the store one night after Art had closed up. Sammy bragged about it to everyone who'd listen. He also boasted that Karen had “a great set of knockers,” and that he'd already gotten to third base with her. I'd always disliked that jerk. Now I hated him even more.

Karen must have sensed that I was staring at her, because she came right up to me and started making small talk about school, classes, and summer vacation. I didn't hesitate. I sat down at the counter and ordered an egg cream. While I was watching her work, I imagined Karen and that putz Sammy going at it in the back room. Something inside me started to stir. She'd given me an opening, and this time I decided to go for it. So I asked her out for Friday night. She didn't wait for me to suggest a movie or bowling or even a party.

“My dad doesn't close up till eleven on weekends,” she said. “Come over to my house around seven.”

She'd caught me off guard. Manny used to say that girls want it as much as we do. We just have to give them an excuse to do it. Could it really be this easy? I started imagining the possibilities.

It was only Monday, and I had all week to think about it. By Wednesday I was already wavering. What would I do if she came on to me? Should I bring a condom? I daydreamed about it in school, at home, while I was studying, and before sleep. It was the kind of free-floating anxiety I'd feel before a baseball tryout, or right at the moment when I'd have to ask someone to dance. By Thursday, I was wishing that Manny was around to give me a pep talk.