Читать книгу Nirvana Is Here - Aaron Hamburger - Страница 13

SHIRTS AND SKINS

LAST SUMMER, NOT LONG AFTER WE’D first met, Mark knocked on my door and dragged me back to his house to play “hoops.”

The Taborskys had nailed a basketball hoop above their garage door. The rim seemed impossibly high and narrow. Could it really swallow the plump orange ball Mark had chucked at my waist?

“Shirts and skins!” Mark announced.

“Careful, he trips people,” warned his little brother, watching from the porch.

I refused to take off my shirt, so he took off his Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” T-shirt, black with a skull and crossbones printed over a basketball.

Though I was supposed to look at the basketball, my eyes drifted down to Mark’s brick red nipples, his navel, his hips, and his legs, thick, toned, and laced with dark hair. Girls my age were starting to shave their legs, and their smooth creamy skin reminded me of spoiled milk. Maybe I’d have liked girls more if they had hairy legs.

Pausing mid-dribble, Mark said, “Here’s a tip. Watch the guy’s hips, not his chest. The hips tell you where he’s going to go.”

He’d noticed me noticing his body, yet he didn’t seem to care.

“Did your dad teach you that?” I asked.

“My dad can’t even dribble the ball. I learned it at basketball camp.” I hadn’t realized there was such a thing as basketball camp. “All the coaches were black. Don’t let them send you to one of those crappy camps with Jewish coaches.”

We played to 21, and Mark beat me 21-0. “You shoot like a girl,” he said, not unkindly, more like a scientist making an empirical observation. “What sports are you good at?”

“I’m the same at all of them.” True enough. I stood in left field during softball, warmed the bench for basketball, or ran along the sidelines for football or soccer. The other boys charitably avoided aiming any balls in my direction. In return, I occasionally helped them out in art class or with history homework.

“Any faggot can be good at sports.” Mark stretched his shirt back over his head.

“You just need practice. Use our net. I’ll be waiting for you.”

He’d be waiting for me, I thought, with his bared nipples, his scaly-skinned basketball, and crude talk about “faggots,” or as he called them, “faggies.” Mark claimed that a faggie had offered to blow him in the bathroom at Hudson’s department store.

“Never let a faggie walk behind you,” Mark advised before I trudged home in defeat. “They’re always trying to stick stuff up your ass, trying to give you AIDS.”