I don’t think they can handle the Juice, Davey Dog sneered a challenge.
He smirked with superiority and you couldn’t tell exactly where he was looking, because his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.
There were eight of us gathered in his basement, four boys, four girls, all between the ages of 15 and 17. The Dog’s basement was a safe harbor where we could drink and use drugs without worrying about getting busted.
Davey Dog was my friend Joe’s brother-in-law. He was in his late thirties and worked as a driver for Wise potato chips, which meant there was never a shortage of chips for us to much on.
Dave wore dark glasses whether inside or outside. I had only seen his eyes several times, and didn’t like that they were vacant and overcrowded all at once.
Dave spoke with a self-consciously cultivated drawl, a stoned surfer and hipster burn-out rolled into one. It was a voice that he often “blackened up” for maximum effect. Perhaps he had dreamed of being a jazz hero, some kind of midnight falcon or hawk, but he was a driver for Wise potato chips who drank like a fish and did a ton of drugs and liked having young people around who he imagined looked up to him as some sort of Vice Den Messiah.
Which was how Joe saw him.
Joe had grown up in a traditional Italian family, a family of immigrants, and when Dave married Joe’s sister, Linda, it was like American coolness had infiltrated their lives. Dave was a self-heralded rebel in ways that greatly appealed to Joe’s imagination.
On this night we were all drinking beer and most of us were tripping X. We sat and ate chips and lovingly insulted one another, and at one point Joe turned to Dave with a smile and said—Tell em about the Juice, Dog.
Dave smiled and held it until it became a hard, unnatural thing, then cautioned—Man, I’d better not even talk about that stuff.
Dave swigged from his beer, and Joe went on, as Dave knew he would—The Dog has this stuff, this juice you drink, and . . . man, I had the smallest amount the other night, just a little, and I was gone.
Dave, like a proud mentor, picked up where his pupil had left off—Dude couldn’t even walk. His legs were jelly.
Dave hissed laughter through his nostrils while clapping his hands riotously. Joe did the same and affirmed—I was jelly, man.
Let us have some, Dominic pressed.
Yea, don’t hold out, Anthony pitched in.
That’s when Dave had said to Joe—I don’t think they can handle the Juice.
The gauntlet had been thrown. Several of us scrambled to pick it up, prepared to transform ourselves into jelly.
After a bit of mandatory pleading on our part, Dave went to the closet, opened it, and just then Linda appeared on the steps leading into the basement. She was at about the halfway point and poked her head out in our direction, surveying the state of the basement and its occupants.
Everything good down here, she asked, looking at us then at Dave.
Yea, Lin, everything’s fine, we’re just shooting the shit.
Her voice grew clipped and took on worry—You know you shouldn’t be drinking down here.
She turned her gaze on her brother—And what about you Joey? Are you drunk?
No, Lin, I’m not drunk. Stop acting like mommy.
Before Lin could respond Dave cut in—Lin, isn’t it better that they’re down here, in a safe place, than out on the streets? There ain’t no cops here.
Linda bobbed a nod, as if agreeing, but said—They shouldn’t be drinking at all. They’re kids, Dave. They shouldn’t be getting drunk.
Dave responded in a calm, paternal voice—Don’t worry, Lin. I’m keeping an eye on them. I’ll make sure they’re alright.
We, the kids, remained frozen in the glare of Linda’s implication.
Don’t stay up too late, she told Dave, then ascended the stairs.
Dave smiled and turned to Joe—Your sister’s a real watchdog.
Tell me about it, Joe agreed.
Dave went into the closet and took out a plastic jug filled with clear liquid and poured what was equivalent to mouthwash gargle amounts into paper cups.
Start with that and see how you feel, Dave spoke like a doctor prescribing medicine.
Me, Dominic, Anthony, Joe, Kim, and Kristine had some. Janine and Mary passed.
I drank what had the texture of syrup and pretty much no taste at all.
What is this stuff, I asked Dave.
It’s medicine to help you relax, Dave responded coyly and dosed himself.
We each had a second round and before drinking Dave warned us—Remember, you drink too much of this shit and you won’t be able to walk.
Then he laughed, perhaps perversely relishing the notion of us as cripples.
Me, Dominic, and Kristine went on to dose a third time, the others stopped at two. It wasn’t long before it felt as if my entire face and body were wrapped in warm, fuzz-coated cellophane. Cellophane that pulsed and produced feverish tingles.
Everyone seemed to be more or less in a state of happy plasticity. Except for Kristine, who shifted from gelatinously relaxed to motor impaired. Her movements had become palsied and she couldn’t focus her eyes. She fell twice. Her enunciation had become syrupy and clotted.
Dave grew concerned. He pulled me and Joe off to the side.
You’re gonna have to do something with this girl, he spoke with low gravity. Your sister’s upstairs and . . . I can’t have this bitch dying in my basement.
She’s not gonna die, I snapped with assurance, yet felt alarmed that Dave had even raised the possibility.
She’s your girlfriend Johnjohn, do something with her, Dave said.
She’s not my girlfriend, I shot back.
Well that bitch wants to jump your bones, I can tell you that much, Dave said. Just cuz you’re too much of a homo to do anything with her…
Dave smiled and cupped the back of my neck, letting me know that his remark was meant as encouragement and not as a slight.
What do you want me to do with her, I said to Dave.
Just then, as if she had been privy our conversation, Kristine called out—Johnjohn, will you come with me to the bathroom. Will you? Please?
I saw Kristine slumped against the wall, Janine by her side, rubbing her shoulder.
Johnjohn you should go with her, Janine urged maternally.
And you’re telling me the bitch doesn’t want you, Dave grinned like a pair of evil scissors.
I walked over to Kristine. Janine gave us space.
Let me lean on you, Kristine said.
I tucked my hand into Kristine’s armpit and guided her into bathroom, closing the door behind us.
She immediately dropped to her knees and began puking into the toilet, a lot of it splashing onto the toilet seat, which was down. I came in from the side and flipped the toilet seat up, wanting to be useful in some way. Kristine retched violently, her body convulsing. I rubbed her shoulder as I had seen Janine do.
Eventually Kristine finished and lifted her head from the toilet. Puke moistened her mouth and the edges of her long dark hair. I tore off strips of toilet paper and handed them to her.
Your mouth., I said.
She wiped her lips and her mouth.
Did I get it?
Yea. There’s also some in your hair.
Help me stand, she said.
I took Kristine’s arm and helped her to her feet.
She stared into the medicine cabinet mirror.
I can’t even see myself, she said. My vision is out of whack.
Am I here, she asked, and laughed a soft, curdling laugh.
You’re here, I assured her.
I pinched her forearm.
Feel that?
No, she responded.
I pinched my own forearm.
I can’t feel it either, I said. Guess we’re both not here.
We’re ghosts, Kristine smiled. Then—Can you help me clean the puke out of my hair?
Sure, I said.
I turned on the water, regulating it until warm.
Tilt your head to the right, I guided Kristine. A little lower. Good.
I placed the puke-stained strands of hair under the running water.
The feel of Kristine’s hair along with the warm water threading between my fingers put me at ease.
I asked Kristine to switch sides and tilt left and continued washing.
When I was done I grabbed a towel from the towel-rack and dried the ends of her hair.
Good as new, I told her.
You’re a great beautician, Kristine smiled, then looked into the mirror—I still can’t see myself. Not clearly. I’m a smudge. You’re a smudge too.
We’re impressionistic, I said.
Yes we’re, Krsitine brightly started, then stopped, and looked into the mirror, perhaps to verify the substance of her impression. Then she turned to me and looked into my eyes in a hazy out-of-focus sort of way, and said—We’re good friends, aren’t we Johnjohn?
Yes K, we’re good friends.
Kristine smiled, as if doped by innocence.
We’re such close friends, she went on, and you like me, right?
Of course I like you.
No, I mean, like-me like-me. Do you like-me like-me Johnjohn?
It was then that our words crossed.
As I spoke—I like you—Kristine suggested—We should have sex—and then we stopped, a couple of ghosts who were still inhabited by their bodies.
You want to have sex now, I asked Kristine.
Yea, now. Why not? We should do it. We like each other and . . . everyone is out there and we’re in here.
We were in here and they were out there, I adopted Kristine’s reasoning. Why not, right?
Don’t worry, Kristine said, I’ll brush my teeth.
You have a toothbrush with you?
No, I’ll do it with my finger.
Which is what she did.
When she was done—Smell.
She breathed into my face.
Minty fresh with just the faintest under-scent of puke.
We began making out.
Tongues, hands, groping, friction, and eventually Krsitine’s jeans around her ankles, and then her panties.
I looked down at Kristine’s panties, which were cream-colored, and noticed that they were splotch-darkened in the center.
Kristine followed my line of vision to the spot and said—I forgot that I have my period. Do you care?
I don’t care, I lied.
I looked into Kristine’s fuzzy eyes, then at the blood-dark spot, to which I was magnetically drawn, and fell into a metronomic tic of a rhythm. Eyes, blood, eyes, blood, eyes, blood.
Maybe now’s not the right time, Kristine said, sliding her panties up past her thighs and around her hips. Next came her jeans, and once again she was fully clothed, the reversal complete.
Thank you for being with me Johnjohn, Kristine said and squeezed my hand.
Of course, I said, and squeezed back, feeling bewildered and grateful.
I stood there, torn between wanting to fuck Kristine and wanting to love her, and couldn’t clearly make out the difference between the two.
After Kristine and I left the bathroom and rejoined the others, Dave, flanked by Joe, pulled me aside and asked—What were you two doing in there?
When I responded that I had washed her hair, Dave cocked his head and squinted—I don’t know whether you’re a homo or a bullshitter.
I told Dave to pick whichever one he liked, not caring enough to let him know there was a third choice which he wouldn’t understand.
The coke parties were my favorite. It was when everyone was happiest. Everyone meant my father, my mother, and their friends, Teddy and Debby. Occasionally, Debby’s brother, Wayne, was part of everyone.
My mother would say—Teddy and Debby are coming over—and I knew that meant a coke party and I got excited.
The coke turned them into children again. Or a peculiar breed of children with waxy glowing faces and eyes full of fire. Not dragon-fire or hell-fire. The fire of all-night magic.
Teddy was a Greek man with two thick dark rugs for eyebrows. Like two baby Muppets had sprouted above his eyes. Teddy loved to laugh. A high-pitched, wheezing laugh, a tea kettle blowing off steam.
His wife, Debby, was the smart one in the bunch. That’s how I thought of her because she was a college graduate. She was the only college graduate I knew. No one in my family had graduated college. Or had even come close. My father had dropped out in sixth grade, my mother in eighth grade. Because Debby was the smart one I always found it odd that she did coke with the others. I suppose I thought college graduates didn’t do coke, that they were too smart or too good for it. Maybe I believed higher education meant a higher quality of living, I don’t know.
Yet I was glad Debby did coke with them, because then everyone was unified in their happiness. The times that Wayne came over, he participated in the happiness, too, but it dampened my joy, just slightly, because something about Wayne scared me. Perhaps it was the stories I overheard him telling, about jail and fistfights and robberies.
The kitchen was where the action took place. As soon as Teddy and Debby entered the apartment, my father would press—Teddy, did you get the stuff—and Teddy, smiling big, would put my father’s mind at ease—Yea, Johnny, I got the stuff—and both men would enliven with anticipation.
Seated at the kitchen table, Teddy or my father would razor-cut lines on a small mirror (engraved with a Heineken logo). I loved the exactitude of the ritual. The methodical dicing of the lines. The plastic straw or rolled-up bill passed around. The vacuum-sucking snorts, and the finicky staccato inhalations draining the residue lining the insides of the nostrils.
My father never let me stay in the kitchen when they snorted. He’d tell me to go into the living room and watch T.V. Fortunately, the kitchen was adjacent to the living room, and leaning against the base of the recliner, “watching T.V.,” I’d angle myself just so and watch them through the open doorway. Yet listening to them brought even greater pleasure than watching them.
The din of their voices, growing bright and electric, the ripples of laughter, with Teddy’s pitch reaching dolphin squeal frequencies.
On those nights they talked and talked and talked, and the warmth that they generated, even if through artificial means, was something I savored and cherished.
It was like being coked-up through osmosis.
Their joy was my joy, their cheer my cheer, their energy my energy.
It was togetherness, albeit a second-rate version, for it only lasted as long as the effects of the drug did. The aftermath of the coke parties, the postscript, bore ruin and waste. When we were all high it was great, the comedowns on the other hand, left us jangled.
In those periods, the magic of childhood dimmed and we darkened and grew old before our time.
Between childhood and death, lay an inclement center which refused to keep still.
Do you know where your children are?
Or rather who, in their ripening pedigree
and new language they are in the process of becoming?
Make no mistake
they are not
nor have they ever been
yours
belonging
infinitely to the green force driving wild shoots
and spleendeep rhythms,
rogue digits
calculating Tomorrow’s petty pace,
they pay no heed
nor praise
to milkwhite coroners
or dead secret gods—
Feral beginners,
brazen and jangled,
they are learning, on a tilted axis,
how to master vertigo
and mend hemhorrages,
how to alter static forecasts
and give the future a fierce makeover.
They do this
claiming the Meek’s inheritance
to fund an Indiegogo Renaissance,
rearing ingrown urges
to become the next generation
of textonal Beats, Bards & Romantics.
Teething on sound, fury
and bright rage,
they don’t need your
Oxford, Britannica
or New Yorker
to define themselves,
to hell with your Webster’s
and Times crossword puzzles,
They have traded in oldschool standards
for a youtube revolution
and ad-free listening to
to hi-def Muses,
pipers to their own call,
they deliver fresh signatures
and encoded cravings
upon cybercentric
walls and posts
beautiful wrecks
of form following function
to blow print runs
and paper hats out
of standing water,
smileyface wink and nod to democracy
is at their fingertips
and screen tested daily.
Pop horror be damned,
they will not turn into braindead zombies
scavenging the earth for slugs and entrails,
their hands far too busy
turning screws and splinters
of discontent
into arias and choral chants.
So I ask again—Do you know where your children are?
Or who in the juggling of pits and seeds they are destined to become?
Make no mistake
with each and every
text, glyph, groove, totem,
riff, rant, image, ballad
and blow,
they are growing
nearer to themselves,
cellular babes toddling bluntly
against the grain,
scamps trespassing a course, uncharted,
their compasses set to Grace.
It was a thing. Every Tuesday night at around 7 or 8, the black Cadillac Sedan would pull up in front of Tali’s bar, and the driver would hustle around to the other side of the car, open the door, and out would step the esteemed passenger. John Gotti.
In the 90s John Gotti was king in our neighborhood. Most of the boys wanted to grow up to be like him. The expensive cars, the three-piece suits, the swagger and moxie, the awe and reverence he inspired. We felt lesser than and we wanted to feel better than and John Gotti was a symbolic bench-mark for high esteem.
On Tuesday nights Gotti would come collect money from Tali’s, a bar in which he was invested. Tali’s was located right up the block from where I lived. I never went in, and you couldn’t see inside because the front door was solid and the windows were darkened. Actually, I did go inside once, I don’t remember why, maybe my father or one of my uncles was in there, and I remember seeing a bunch of old men smoking and playing cards at tables directly across from the bar.
Outside Tali’s you’d often see Italian men, of all ages, loitering, smoking, bullshitting. The front of Tali’s was a Little Italy unto itself.
I could never tell which men were real gangsters and which were wanna-be gangsters. They all looked and acted like gangsters, conducted themselves with a belligerent sense of self-importance and bombastic speech, but I knew, from my father, that many were playing at being a gangster, or hoped to be regarded as such through their shoulder-brush association with the real gangsters.
I have no idea where my father stood in the gangster scheme of things. I knew that he received Teamster magazines, and that he had worked private sanitation for a while (which everyone knew was a mafia-run operation), and he definitely knew a lot of people, but I was never certain if he was on the periphery, on the outside looking in, or close to the center.
Once when I asked him about mafia, he snapped—John, when are you gonna grow up, there’s no such thing as mafia.
Mafia, it seemed, was a fiction on par with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, an illusion that required puncturing as a rite of passage.
Regular people went to Tali’s too. I knew because my uncle Anthony, who was definitely not a gangster, would sometimes go there to hang out. When I asked him what it was like inside there, what went on, he said—Nothing really goes on. The usual bar stuff. People drink, hang out, play cards, shoot darts, that kind of thing.
His banal description of Tali’s dulled the luster of the mystique I had built up in my mind. I imagined there was a back-room where people were sometimes killed. And that the ghosts of those people continued to haunt Tali’s. That big and important deals, determining the fates of various lives, were brokered in a hush-hush manner.
Maybe these things happened, maybe not. By time I was old enough to legally drink Tali’s had closed down and was replaced by an Italian restaurant. Which, as it turned out, was a place where I waited tables for a summer when I was in my thirties. If the ghosts of the brutally slain were still milling about, I never heard a thing.
Posted in Prose, Uncategorized
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Tagged Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, John Biscello, john gotti, kids, mafia, mob, Prose, story, tali's bar
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