Think of me….

under the sculpted angel hovering above the back stairwell of St. John’s Lutheran School, in 4th grade. It’s lunch. We are told never to leave the schoolyard. I am walking with classmate Jesse Gordon, & his older brother Luke, up the block towards Forest Park. They started at St. John’s when 3rd grade began - over a year ago, coming from public school, with a reputation as ‘bad boys’. The boys felt a need to play down to others’ expectations. I fit in. We head past picnic tables, the playground, toss rocks through greenhouse panes, & the Forest Park Bandshell. During the War years of the 40s free concerts were held here; nowadays it’s an area for drugdealing & teenage ‘parking’. The Gordons have come to buy joints. I tell them I don’t do drugs - too much seen from my days in Ridgewood. The Gordons let my presumed pussiness go, sensing I’m more wise to the world than they are.

Luke meets a drug dealer behind the Bandshell. A year later something would occur here to shook up the lives of 2 black brothers - Kenny & Miles Webber - who transferred from public school with the Gordons. But now, Jesse argues & fights with an older kid. Luke & I join in. The older kid is Hispanic - an arrogant punk. I don’t know it then but I’ll know him in years to come. He’s a psychopath named Junior (pronounced Hoon-yuh) who enjoys raping women - or will in coming years. He’s stronger than any of us, but together we send him on his way. He vows to ‘get’ Jesse. Luke Gordon is known as a psycho, too. He vows to kill Junior if he sees his greasy ass around the Bandshell again. The Forest Park Bandshell will become Ground Zero for the Hispanic gang that runs the area - the Omega 7. But, this day 4 boys part with enmity, unrealizing a template has been forged.

As sun shines through green leaves of Forest Park I’m no longer with the Gordons, but trudging through Forest Park from my home in Glendale to Franklin K. Lane High School in East New York - technically & geographically Brooklyn, although Lane is listed a Queens school in intermural sports. A small ecru-haired kid named ‘Spud’ - Pete Spudini - tags along. Spud views me as a hero since the St. John’s Cub Scouts. He was shy & goofy-looking. I was brash, if goofy-looking. It’s wise to distance yourself from kids who look up to you when others look down upon you - it’ll only reinforce the downlookers’ idea you are worthy of being looked down upon because you have even more pathetic kids who look up to you. In accordance, I seek to rid myself of Spud - an appendage I look to lose every morning through Forest Park. I tune his inanity out, & remember what gone on in this park through the years. Spud says something, of course, inane. I walk.

Other days I walk with Pious Ehmer - younger brother of Bettina Ehmer, a tall cute Aryan girl from St. John’s. Now she’s a tall Deutscher goddess with long legs, juicy knockout tits, & a ferociously killer bod. She is 1 of the few St. Johnners at Lane who deign to speak to me. I’d love to fuck her brutal, & barely keep my boner down in her presence, but she’s ‘out of my league’, making that subtly known at our reacquaintance. Thoughts of her body are omnipresent when her brother tags along. Pious was a year younger, in my best pal Ricky Gerhardt’s class at St. John’s. The Gerhardt boys made it through St. John’s, then to Martin Luther High School. Most St. Johnners were like me or the Ehmers - a few years & out.

Pious was skinny, blond, shorter than his sister, & told me all his problems. Over the years I’ve served as confessor to people - male or female, black or white, older or younger, gay or straight, in personal or professional relationships. Some say I’m cold & insensitive, yet others seek out my wise counsel, or comfort. Even the Gordons wanted me along on their forays as an ‘expert’ if their buys went bad. Pious was shy, longed to be tough - a real man, but was a ‘good boy’ with an angelic demeanor, & good grades. He got comfortable enough around me to tell me he didn’t know if he liked girls. I always sensed he was queer, but this day he wondered if we could hang out together. I knew my cock was in danger from his lips if I didn’t slap him down hard. I told him I wasn’t queer - to drop any ideas. I didn’t mind fags, but if he touched me I’d beat his ass in. If queers wanna suck each other off it ain’t my business - but leave me out. I never liked the way kids were used by fags at Tonio’s bar in Ridgewood, nor the open sex practiced in the parking lot of nearby flit bar, Manny’s, but as long as they kept their shit private I’d get angry hearing of bullshit that befell queers at Manny’s - instigated by Paco Robatillo & the Wannabes, or anyone else. There were good queers & bad queers, like any other group. After my demarcation of self & other, Pious never again mentioned his‘proclivities’. I mentioned I could introduce him to queers from Manny’s. He had no reason to be ashamed, but no reason to expect me to want him - especially considering how hot his sister was, & how often I’d mentioned this fact. It’s my life’s luck that of the 2 Ehmers to want to ‘get close’ it was the wimpy brother & not the sexy sister! Pious rarely walked or talked with me after this demarcation. I can’t say for certain he‘had a crush’ - but it was likely. I wasn’t gonna take a chance. I had enough problems getting girls to notice me - I didn’t need a suckbuddy like Abel K., the computer Jew.

Lane produced many tough SOBs: Rollo - the assassin from the black J-Liners gang, Paco & Junior - the toughest of O-7 Wannabes, & psycho drug addict Rory Tuukkanen, from the Glendale nabe. None, in a straight up 1 on 1, could have beaten Trench. His large frame had light blond hair whose bangs oleaginously dripped across his eyes. He wore ripped jeans for pants & a coat with steel weapons & totems dripping off - whatever the season & weather. Trench would have set off metal detectors kids had to pass through every day to get into Lane, but was allowed to pass - no school guard dared stop him. For some reason he & I hit it off. Perhaps that intelligence thing - where dumb kids admired me for understanding, & not talking down to, them.

We shared shop classes & hung out - usually in the cafeteria, sometimes outside. He & I were the nexus of a group of ‘outsiders’ - not jocks, cools, geeks, nor Honor Rolls - those kids others were scared of, or put off by. Neither cool kids nor wimps came near our table. Occasionally, a pretty white girl would pretend she thought 1 of us ‘cute’. It was routine cunt cruelty designed to lull a sucker into asking her out, then reject him in front of her pack of twats. They never dared Trench. When they tried me I’d cut them down verbally, or offer to fuck them in public. The 3rd time a cunt tried to shag my feelings I dropped my drawers & offered the whore $5 to suck my cock in public. The girl was redfaced, ran back to her clique, & I was a hero - especially to the others in our Breakfast Club - skinny Jewish Adam Messner, tall black-haired Italian Jack Zito, & Japanese-German Osaka Gedney. Adam & O were not lucky as Trench & I - Adam, prone to being humiliated by cunts, tried to ‘redeem’ himself threatening to kick Osaka’s ass. Jack was impassive, with a girlfriend named Regina, never showing passion except for his stableboy jobs at Belmont & Aqueduct Racetracks.

White cunts weren’t the only bitches to fuck with us. Trench got into an argument with black girls a few tables over. A tall, sassy black chick took exception to Trench’s calling her a nigger whore. She threatened to slap him. Trench smiled, stood up, said for her to do it. She backed down. Trench was 1 of the few white kids who stood up to the weird reverse racism pervading Lane. Many white kids feared black kids - especially the sassier, ballsier girls. In my homeroom, this white kid on the Lane Varsity Football team was a BMOC - many white chicks lusted for him. He’d sometimes pick on me. I stood up to him & surprised myself by fighting him to a draw in homeroom. Because he was bigger & stronger his stock slid while mine rose, if not in the eyes of the babes he fucked (whom I’d loved to have diddled), in the eyes of freaky, geeky kids. A month later this tall black girl with glasses got into an argument with him. You could read ‘whitey fear’ in his body movements. She approached his desk & shouted him down, then slapped him a few times. He didn’t retaliate, fell backward & teared up. His standing was shot, even though he could have beaten the shit out of her. The class laughed. The black chick turned around & asked what the fuck I was laughing at. I said him, pointing to the fallen jock. She said I should watch it or she’d slap my ass silly, too. I said I didn’t think that was gonna happen. Oh yeah? She went to slap me. I ducked & clocked her in the mush with my fist. She fell backwards over a desk, & was stunned. No white kid ever clocked her ass. 1 of the black boys said he was gonna fuck me up & lunged at me. I whipped out my trusty butterfly knife & told him to sit his ass back down. He did. The word got out I, like Trench, was 1 of the few white kids not racially kowed. I’d grown up amongst many people of different colors & backgrounds, & realized individuals - not their groups - could be dangerous. There was no innate differences between races. I could discern the ability of a possible enemy to inflict harm. The jock just had fears to suckle. The black cunt had her embarrassment of being whipped by a freaky little 4-eyed white boy. I had my knife. Unlike Trench, I smuggled it into school every day, dropping it into a thermos filled with sand - a trick I learned from another pal, Jorge ‘Gonzo’ Gonzales.