Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut (15 page)

 

I was the ice cream man the summer after high school. It was the perfect job—driving eighteen hours a day, just me, the streets of Boston, my tunes and my truck, hustling a freezer full of toxic chocolate sludge. Every morning, I stocked up in Charlestown and hit the road, pimping my Nutty Buddies, Hoodsies, Bomb Pops and Gobstoppers block to block. This was the best job ever. I had visions of lissome brunettes pulling crisply folded twenties out of their bikini tops with the command, “Cool me off, sugar boy.”

Instead, these visions gave way to a reality of sitting in Southeast Expressway traffic all day, munching ice cream sandwiches, slurping Mountain Dew, singing along to the radio, all to bring the Chipwiches and Chocolate Whirls to the sweaty little children of my town. There hadn’t been an ice cream man in town for years—the previous guy had blown his license by selling weed out of his truck. So I was bringing ice cream to blocks that were starved for it.

I pushed all kinds of weight: popsicles, Fudgsicles, dreamsicles, Creamsicles. Take a ride on the white line highway, my white lines go a long way. Pay the toll, sell your soul, my Nutty Buddy’s nice and cold. Since I was paying wholesale for a truckload of them, and I was my own boss, I could eat into the profits all I wanted. With all due respect to Tony Montana in
Scarface
, my policy was to get high on my own supply.

To this day, when I hear “Purple Rain,” I can taste the La Dip—a revolting concoction consisting of two deep-fried chocolate chip cookies, the kind you’d get out of a hospital vending machine, with a block of vanilla ice cream in between, and then the whole shebang given an inch-thick coat of fudge and then apparently battered in some strange kind of sucrose tempura. It was like a hockey puck, except harder to digest. Every time I chomped away on one, I wondered, what kind of God permits such a thing to exist? A fucking righteous God.

I vowed on my first day that girls who flirted with the ice cream man would get free La Dips. This didn’t turn out to be the profit drain I anticipated.

I leased the truck from the Universal Ice Cream Company in Boston, and bought the ice cream, candy, bubble gum, soda, etc., wholesale from them. I did not mess around with soft serve, which is a whole other genre of ice cream man. Every morning, I drove into the warehouse and took a few minutes to fill out the order form. Let’s see. Nobody wants Toffee Krunch Bars, delicious though they might be. Screwball Orange? Too complex for the masses. Malt Cup? Too subtle. Chunka Choklit? Now we’re talking. Freeze Pops? On the money! Astro Pops? On lots and lots of money!

The guys at the Universal Ice Cream Company were a mysterious bunch. I liked to imagine they were shady underworld characters, but they were probably just badly dressed. Randy, the owner and boss, was a great guy, walking around the warehouse with a clipboard that had nothing attached to it. He wore a Members Only jacket (it was cold inside that place) and shades, hairy as a panda. For some reason, the boss would always greet me with a Greek joke. Did he think I was Greek? I don’t recall how it came up, but without fail, every morning, he would grab my hand and say something like, “What’s virgin wool in Argos?” or “What’s the motto of the Spartan army?”

“Hey duuude, how you doing?” I would reply. The word “dude” was brand-new on the East Coast that summer, and if it’s now hard to imagine life without it, that’s mainly because it functions so efficiently as a way of acknowledging someone’s physical presence while discreetly backing away. The word could be stretched into one long vowel while you inched closer to the door, and it was easier than laughing at Randy’s jokes.

Randy was a big Springsteen fan—who wasn’t that summer? As a result, whenever you handed in your order for Dubble Bubble, he would sing, “This gum’s for hiii-yaaah!”

The first time I drove in to beg for the job, he sat me down and told me about the last guy. “Goddamn hippie,” he said. “Sold the drugs right out of the truck. You’re not on the drugs, are you?”

“No way, dude,” I said. “What this world is coming to.”

“You’re gonna have to go in and interview for the license, and the first thing they’re going to do is look in your eyes. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because they can see the drugs in your eyes.”

“Awesome.”

“You look like a nice kid,” he said, touching his shades yet not budging them a bit, just hinting at the existence of shades-removal as a conversational gambit. “But if I ever hear about you selling anything, I will break your goddamn ankles.”

“Got it.”

“Ever drive a truck before?”

“No.”

“Good. Hey, how did Socrates separate the men from the boys?”

I got the license. I did not sell the drugs. I had my route all mapped out—Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Hyde Park and Milton, miles and miles of hungry kids. If I started early in the morning, I could make the whole route in eighteen hours, get back to Charlestown, and plug in the truck so the freezer could recharge overnight. The next morning, I’d be right back on the road. Ice cream sleeps for no man.

My truck had a big green dragon painted on the door, to show the customers where you stick the trash. The dragon’s mouth cleverly surrounded the hole in the door where the garbage bag went. If I punched the button on the dashboard, I could turn on the revolving lights up front, to let all passersby know that ice cream was rolling through. There was also a button to ring the bell. And
no,
it was not one of those newfangled ice cream trucks that plays a stupid jingle all the time. No, no, no. I hear those all the time in my neighborhood now and I shake my head. These trucks offend my professional code. You know what that means? It means he
doesn’t respect the ice cream
. A real ice cream man doesn’t play a little jingle—just a bell that rings and says “never fear, the ice cream man is here, let’s see those dimes and quarters appear” without hassling people with a jingle.

I see the ice cream man on my block, and he makes the kids wait in line. You know what that means? That’s right, you heard me—it means he
doesn’t respect the ice cream.
It also means he probably sells the drugs.

Like playing a stupid jingle—you betray the whole experience when you make people stand in line. The kids want to crowd around the ice cream truck and look inside, ogle all the flavors and freezers, like boozers standing at the bar. Nobody wants to be put on the spot, forced to make up their mind fast like they’re standing at the free-throw line. Of course, people want to feel like they’re waiting their turn, without others cutting in line ahead of them, but a real ice cream man knows how to reassure the customers that he remembers whose turn is when. You’re here to make people relax, enjoy the presence of the truck, not make it a stressful experience. You’re here to respect the ice cream. Can’t sell it without insulting it? Fine. Somebody else will, buddy.

This was the best job I ever had, even if it meant putting up with little kids all day. I learned a lot about crowd control. Sno-Cones were the toughest. You have to open them for the kid, because they’re basically a fat chunk of ice in a plastic bag. Two out of three Sno-Cones get dumped on the ground while the kid is trying to rip them open. I think they must design them that way on purpose. So when you give a kid a Sno-Cone, you better have a back-up handy. After the first Sno-Cone hits the dirt, you have to hustle the new one into their hands pronto. You have a two- or three-second window.

They never cry right away. They always stare at the ground in shock, then fast-forward through denial, anger, depression and acceptance before they start to wail. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. That Sno-Cone on the sidewalk is the end of innocence, the first lesson that the world is out to nail them, and you do
not
want to be there when this happens.

The kid is crushed. The other kids stare at you in Sno-Conenfreude. The parents are pissed. You have to get the new Sno-Cone into their mitts
before
they start crying, or it’s too late.

Everybody was always glad to see me. Who doesn’t love the ice cream man? The kids turned out to be plenty of fun. They were, in a manner of speaking, my kids. I kept them cool. By the end of June, the shorties on the route knew when to show up. They knew to stay on the sidewalk until the truck stopped, because they knew an ice cream man puts child safety first. They knew not to ask the ice cream man annoying questions like “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Hey ice cream man, how much money do they pay you?”

“Simmer down, you rascals. I don’t do this for money. I do it for the love of ice cream.”

“Do you sleep in the truck?”

“Do you got a bathroom in the truck?”

“You got any Lotsa Fizz?”

“Yes, my young whippersnapper with the arcane taste. I ordered some just for you.”

“Hey ice cream man, do you got a girlfriend?”

“Right bitches. Who wants a Bomb Pop?”

Nobody wanted a Bomb Pop. They were easily the most worthless crap in the truck. Red, white and blue lacrosse sticks made of ice, completely flavorless, barely worth the room they took up in the freezer. I priced them at a dime, in case any absolute bottom feeders wanted the cheapest item I had, but really, you’d be better off sucking on the dime. Moreover, Bomb Pops were possessed of dubious patriotic overtones.

“Hey, Randy, I’m not sure about these Bomb Pops.”

“Kids
love
the Bomb Pops. What are you talking about? Need a fresh case?”

“Dude, it’s gonna take me all summer to unload the ones you already sold me.”

“There’s no such thing as bad ice cream. Only a bad ice cream man.”

“It isn’t really even ice cream, though. More like ice. Besides, don’t you think the name is a bit obnoxious?”

“What? It’s a bomb of ice cream.
Ka-boom!
”

“I don’t know, dude. As a draft-age male, I wonder if you’ve considered the nausea that the words ‘bomb pop’evoke in your late-adolescent customers. Don’t you think the threat of thermonuclear war vitiates the innocent pleasures of summer refreshments?”

“Ah, get out of here, kid. It’s always been called the Bomb Pop, and it always will be. Red, white and blue.”

Randy was proud of the Bomb Pop name. He had a framed letter on his office wall from Congressman Ed Markey, who used to drive for the Universal Ice Cream Company to work his way through law school. The letter jovially suggested they change “Bomb Pop” to something less morbid, like the “Nuclear Freeze.” Randy wouldn’t budge.

“Fine. Maybe I’ll sell one to Caspar Weinberger.”

“Cheer up, kid. Hey, did I tell you about the Greek tampon? It’s called ‘Abzorba the Leak.’ ”

I had push-ups, which would have intrigued me more if I’d known that push-up bras even existed, but unfortunately my knowledge of women’s underwear was a little rudimentary at the time. I had chocolate eclairs, Snickers bars, cans of soda that only cost me a dime apiece, which meant they were practically free, and the good old ice cream sandwich, which only cost me a nickel. There was hardly anything I sold that I didn’t eat in any imaginable combination. I was self-employed, so I could pull over any time I wanted and gorge my face full of frosty atrocities. I would roll over to my parents’ house for lunch and ply my sisters with goodies. All I asked my sisters in return was that they say, “You are wise and generous, oh ice cream man.”

I kept my Walkman on the dashboard, plugged into a couple of speakers from Bradlee’s. I played the radio, which was full of great shit that summer. It was a historic summer for Top 40 radio, as anyone who lived through it will tell you. The country was in terrible shape, nuclear war was just around the corner, movies sucked, TV sucked and the Red Sox had just traded Dennis Eckersley for Bill Buckner—but pop was on a roll, and the most advanced music being created anywhere in the world was right there crackling out of my cheapshit speakers.

I was eighteen, and I liked both kinds of music: Echo
and
the Bunnymen. But Top 40 was so rich that every damn station on the dial was playing something incredible. I loved to crank up the volume in the Callahan Tunnel, where you can literally hear the music bounce off the walls. When you have Prince on the radio, all the ice cream you can gobble in the freezer and nothing to do but drive a truck in Boston traffic without a single lesson on how, being eighteen is pretty close to bearable.

I lived on ice cream sandwiches and Top 40 hits all summer, dodging traffic on the Southeast Expressway singing along to an endless loop of “Purple Rain” and “99 Luftballons” and “Roxanne Roxanne” and “Ghostbusters” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Missing You.” I heard Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” so many times a day, I translated it into Spanish just for sheer psychic self-preservation.
(“¡No haces fuego! ¡No haces in fuego en la soledad! ¡Estoy bailando, bailando por la oscuridad!”)
And every time Prince strummed that cathedral-sized opening guitar chord of “Purple Rain,” it felt like the ice cream truck was a spaceship lifting off to bring Creamsicles to distant constellations—even when I was stuck in traffic on Storrow Drive.

My favorite kids were at the corner of Highland and Herman in Dorchester, where I’d arrive around nine. Stacey, Manny and Pepito would breakdance for free ice cream, singing songs like “Centipede” and “Cool It Now.” I would park, eat my dinner of La Dips and Orange Crush, and reflect on a day’s work well done, giving these kids whatever I felt like getting rid of. Then they would make me hide behind the door and make painful noises, so they could throw rocks at the dragon and make him roar.

“Hey ice cream man, the dragon is in pain!”

“That dragon is hurting!”

“Die, dragon!”

“Hey, ice cream man, you got a girlfriend?”

The kids at High Point Village in West Roxbury were special because they were allowed to sass the ice cream man. This was a privilege rarely extended. They called me “R.E.M.,” because that was the music they heard coming out of my truck one afternoon. They thought it was incredibly funny to meet a guy who actually listened to R.E.M., and they did mean imitations of the singer Michael Stipe in the video, clutching earphones and wailing, “I’m soooorryyyyy! I’m soooorryyyyy!”