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.