Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Chapter 6
Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and Embarrassment

I see nothing, hear nothing.
 No light, no sound, just the feel of my mouth.
 My tongue explores the insides of my lips and gums and starts to trace the bottoms of my teeth.
 I know it’s not right but I can’t make myself stop.
 My tongue explores the small gaps between my molars, slippery, but a few rough spots.
I grow bolder, wishing I could stop, this could be bad.
I push harder from the inside edge of my left canine incisor, prodding, pushing, and knowing it cannot end well.

Keveny Memorial Academy was the Catholic high school in Cohoes.  I could have gone to Cohoes High, but it was a lot bigger than Keveny and that’s where I thought the toughs would be, the guys from the rough streets who grew up with a fighting contempt for anyone living a middle class life, or worse. The few friends that I had were pretty much going to Keveny, so I chose it; my parents were just as happy even though they would have to continue forking over tuition.

I started in the fall of ’69, the last year that ‘Freshman Initiation’ was still allowed.  The seniors (the mighty, mighty seniors) all gathered around to torment us little bitty freshmen. We wore our underwear on the outside, socks hanging off our noses, sported weird color hats and carried more stacks of books than anytime before or since.  Some of the nastier seniors made us wash their cars and clean their toilets after they did their business in them, stuff like that.  Of course, juniors and even some bigger sophomores got in a few licks, what did we know? A week of harmless fun designed to embarrass us as much as possible.  If you were humble and willing to please, you were soon off the radar and could go on about your business of trying to fit into high school.

The uniform requirement continued; navy blazer, white shirt, navy tie, navy or gray pants and black dress shoes for the boys, and lighter blue blazers, blue skirts, white blouses and knee socks for the girls.  Hair clean and combed, and not long! An orderly herd of similar lemmings shuffling down the halls and in the stairwells, often lost, wandering into the wrong classes, confused. Shy and mousy as I was, I was already wondering about the sameness and rigidity.

That year, there was a uniform dress code for the Friday night dances.  We didn’t have to wear the daytime uniform, but jackets and ties were required for the boys and girls wore dresses or skirts.  My sisters had told of repairing to the communal restrooms to roll up their skirts at the waistband and open the top buttons of their blouses, you know, to let the air in.  Judy had been mortified once when Father Flanagan, then the principal, made an example of her at the dance and in front of everyone, ordered her to button up and lower that skirt hem to below the knee.  Just what a powerful priest should do to a 16 year old girl.

I was not a dancer and never danced at these things.  I would stand like a dummy and look at the prettiest girls and wish I were stronger, more masculine, or at least less shy. I palled up with the other unnoticeable boys and we graced the wall, not even knowing how to ‘look’ cool.  Our attempts at smart remarks fell flat, even we knew it.  Luckily, we were invisible so no one jeered at us, at least that we saw.  Joey Marino, Timmy Logan and I; not quite geeks, not quite goofy, blending into the wall of the gymnasium in the darkness.

I had graduated from listening to the Beach Boys to digging Chicago, thinking that I was starting to experience the world at last.  In the past we had gathered at the Ballargeon’s house to play Beach Boys records, singing along with them, ignoring the Beatles and talking about the California sound versus the British invasion.  As we all got older and started other pursuits, we all segued to new sounds.

Bob was back home by this time and would disdainfully tell me that I was listening to crap; he played Ten Years After and The Band and Dylan and was way cool.  I think about him now and realized that even though we shared a bedroom growing up, I knew almost nothing about him from those early years, except that he hung around with cool guys, played poker in the park, drank RC’s at Fisher’s and broke his arm falling out of trees on a regular basis.  Really, this happened three or four times and was so well known that he acquired the nickname Bird.  I was Bird Bessette’s little brother, famous by association. 

He graduated high school in ’66, got drafted almost right away, served in Viet Nam in ’67 and ’68 until he got hit by a mortar round, and was back home after the VA hospital by the time I hit high school in ’69.  While he was overseas, he would write letters home telling of what it was like to kill young guys of 13 and 14 years old.  He even sent a few pictures of him in the obligatory stance, holding his rifle up with one foot on the corpse of some obvious adolescent.  He spent at least 6 months in a VA hospital on Long Island. We’d visit and wondrously watch small pieces of shrapnel slit his skin from the inside and pop out of his arms and chest, him lying there stoically, saying nothing.

I am sure he talked volubly with his friends when he got home, but to me he was silent and sullen, private, alone and unwilling to talk.  Even at that young age, I was aware of some of the history in the making.  The news blared it all out at us, protests at conventions, the tally of the body count and ‘Peace with Honor.’  All such bullshit and here was my brother growing even further away from us.  I have no idea what was going on in his mind, but one time, when the family was arguing about something and I had thoughtlessly put in my strident two cents, he literally dragged me out of the kitchen, slammed me up against the back room wall and said “You stupid shit, if you only knew what I know…” and then shook his head, let me go, and left the house.  This was probably 4 or 5 years before he died and I don’t believe we ever spoke again, beyond the minimal communication needed to avoid bumping into each other in the kitchen.  I had lost a brother I never had.

My freshman year was a bad time.  Girls were no longer the neighbors trying to get me to play dolls or the few I knew from St. Joseph’s who were these distant pillars of salt, as oblivious to me as I was to them.  Now, the girls were suddenly, seemingly, closer, like Nancy from third grade, she of the eyes, eyes, eyes, who in time had turned into a sexless (to me) buddy.  The girls now would roll up their skirts so that the hem was above the knee and unbutton those top buttons, and I would see that there were hidden intricacies beneath white linen that I had not imagined.  They would sit in their seats and cross their legs, me looking a surprising distance up their thighs, wishing, but afraid, to see more.  Some were even friendly and would walk close and smell good and sometimes innocently and unthinkingly brush against me.  My fear of heights would overcome me and I would blurt a goodbye, and hustle, weak kneed and sweating, to the nearest boys’ room.

My father was a fan of John D. MacDonald mysteries and generally passed them on to me when he was done.  The male characters were suave with the ladies and always knew what to do.  MacDonald’s Travis McGee came into my life, a serial womanizer who ‘valued women as people,’ or so he implied, and lectured them incessantly between the pages and the sheets about how sex was beautiful and he was all knowing and a whole lot of other blather that I shoveled into my brain as gospel truth.  I became an acne covered kid with no experience, able to speak in reasonable tones in my mind about all my experience and vast knowledge of how to make a woman’s heart flutter.  All to hide the sweat on my brow, the quivering of my knees, and the grim reality that I was scared pissless of all these maturing young ladies so near to my grasp. My freshman year was not spent in book learning but instead in furious blushes, quick exits and sad nocturnal yearnings.  Classes were bad enough, dances were a nightmare awake.  It is a travesty that I spent these years clumsily frightened because of an ingestion of questionable literature.  Jack London was a much healthier literary role model.
Sophomore year was easier, although of course that was the year that they dropped the ‘Initiation’ rite, so we couldn’t gloat over the itty bitty freshmen with the same intensity as was acceptable when we were new.  I was still all caught up in my self defeating sexual philosophy, so as yet I wasn’t at all able to form any worthwhile female friendships; they had their place in the world, and just didn’t seem to realize it.  Travis was still king, I wanted the prowess with life he had and had no idea how to educate my lady acquaintances to how things should be done. 

My male friends were the nerds and the unknowns, those interested in the audio visual club and the Yorkers.  I could have weaved myself into their world, except that I was uninterested in joining any clubs, and so walked pretty much alone in the social atmosphere of high school.  I developed painful crushes and buried all outward signs of them, mumbling to myself in the hallways, avoiding glances, hating the world and myself.  I am sure I would have been research fodder for some modern day social psychologist had one gotten their claws into my thoughts; they would have been screening me for knives and guns before a week was out.

In my junior year, everything changed.  I was developing a cloaking chatter that allowed a tad more intimacy with the women.  I actually had a few dates and occasionally more than one with the same lady!  This newfound insincerity started in the summer between my sophomore and junior years.  Two young women suffered my attentions that summer.  Paula Beltroni was dusky and seductive; 34-24-34, long medium brown hair, curvaceous and affectionate.  I paraded my learned behaviors and had her wondering about me after a month of my sullen craziness.  I lost her the day that she and I were in my living room with her friends Donny and Lori.  Donny was taunting me about the necessity of being in physical control of our women; I had only considered emotional control until then.  He insisted that I slap Paula’s face, Lori looking on with an amused expression, Paula with an apprehensive one.  I held out against the pressure for all of ten minutes; Donny was an experienced man with women, there must be something to it.  At length I slapped Paula’s cheek.  Donny said,

“Harder!  You need to show her who’s boss.”

Donny demonstrated, slapping Lori hard, she staring at me with that same look.

I slapped harder, this time leaving a welt, Paula’s face snapping to the side.  Donny said,

“Again, harder, come on, Jesus, what’s the matter with you?”

One more slap, Paula snuffling, a deeper bruise, me turning red with shame, saying…

“I can’t, I can’t, get the fuck out of here, Goddamn you.”

Donny looking at me with contempt, Lori with amusement, but with fear showing beneath, Paula looking away, tear streaked, red cheeked.

I saw Paula the next day.  She was quiet and distant; I apologized abjectly, she was unresponsive.  Next week she had a new boyfriend; an older, bigger, more mature kid who told me if I ever came near her again he’d have my balls cut off, roasted on a campfire and fed to wild dogs.  I stayed away.

I met another Paula, pink hot pants, slender as a rail except where it counted; she figured me out in less than two weeks, lucky for her.  I never even got started with my self-conscious, stupid bullshit.

By the time school started, I was getting more and more morose and introverted, confused by what I thought I knew, appalled at my inability to be normal.  Somehow I was befriended by a group of misfits that was developing, whose activities revolved around loud music and pot.  They called themselves the ‘Committee’ and wore the requisite long hair, ripped hem bell bottoms and fraying shirts and workboots.  I wanted to be a part of the group but can say with certainty that to those insiders, I was a barely tolerated outsider.  But, I followed along in the forlorn hope that somehow they would come to like me and treat me as an equal.

It was important to listen to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung and anything weird by Pink Floyd.  We’d pool our cash, meet at whoever’s house was empty or up behind the bowling alley to toke a few doobies and then go somewhere and listen to our psychedelic rock and float the night away.  Every time, after imbibing, we’d have to head out to the local sub shop for ham and cheese and chips, nothing ever tasting better before or since.

Mark Murphy was the unofficial, but obvious, leader of the Committee and was always able to find what we needed.  Long after high school, I found out that he was doing time in Albany County Jail on drug charges and might have to do 15 years.  I remember him trucking up the street, long hair swinging.  He was articulate and personable but got caught up in that world of shadiness and it dragged him under.

My parents noticed a change in me, but my glibness and previous trustworthiness hid the truth longer than should have been the case. Bob saw it and thought it was funny and even came through with a nickel bag once in a while, if I could pay for it.  My father suffered my sullenness and refusal to communicate badly, retreating to his Pabst Blue Ribbon and his own demons, saving for me only stony looks.

I don’t really know what my mom and dad were thinking, or exactly what they knew about my adventures.  By this time, my mom had a part time job in an insurance office (Bessette & Sons, no relation!) across from our church, and had even less time or interest in spending time with me than when I was a small fry. She continued doing her home-making duties but spent more and more time on the back porch with her books and magazines, keeping mostly to herself.  If someone went and sat with her, she’d smile and chat a bit, but she didn’t seek any of us out.  She and I just never had a whole lot to say to each other and I don’t know why.

My father, on the other hand, hated this time in my life, and it was very obvious.  I was disrespectful and uncommunicative, except when arguing against his rules with a passion better suited to politics.  He, who had been my friend and playmate all these years, was being shoved aside in favor of friends of uncertain quality.  He just didn’t understand it and responded by being quiet and uncommunicative himself.

One night, one of my good buddies had some good strong pot and a few tabs of Orange Wedge, which was a popular type of LSD, or Acid, at the time.  Half a sixer, two joints and a tab of Wedge later, another buddy and I went with our girls to the bowling alley looking for a third couple we were supposed to meet.  I was feeling very strange when we entered the alleys, bright lights, deafening sound, total confusion. I stood there while the girls went to the biff, getting more and more nervous and paranoid, finally telling Billy that I had to go to the head to get my head screwed back on. 

In the Cohoes Lanes, the first alley was adjacent to and parallel to the walkway that led to the bathrooms and the Starlight Room, which was the bar with subdued lighting where all the middle aged bowlers would go to ‘meet-cute’ and cheat on their spouses.  I walked that hallway, rug squirming under my feet, passing the Ladies room door; it was open and a large group of women and girls in various states of undress were looking through the door at me, jabbering excitedly.  I returned to my path, the balls rumbling down the alley, thundering and crashing at the pins, bad footing on the rug; there’s the Men’s room door.  The door handle was wet and clammy and flexed with my touch, tiny screams through the brain mist, grasped harder, the screams increasing, the knob turning slowly with damp crunching sounds and the door, heavy as a Buick, gave way…

…I walked into the bathroom, but I was looking at the bowling alley, men pissing on the return islands, tossing glittery balls into the toilets, waitresses bringing Shaefers, I turned and walked back out…

…back into the bowling alley, but I was looking at the bathroom, open stalls, water running in the sink, the strong smell of piss, I turned and walked back into the bathroom…

…and was looking at tall urinals against a backdrop of bright lights and thundering pin strikes and people laughing and laughing and laughing, I turned again and walked back out…

…and back into the bathroom, more laughing, fingers pointing, me whimpering with fear, all surfaces smeared with excrement and vomit, waitresses offering me rotted meat in moldy buns, offering to hold me while I pissed, I cried out and backed back out the door, back into the bowling alley…

…the walkway lined with women standing at urinals, women’s room door still open, with bowling matches underway within, between the semi clad and totally naked women; I ran faster, the door receding, then rushing towards me, and out into the night air.

I stood in the parking lot overlooking Ontario Street and watched cars go by, trailing long plumes of evanescence behind, tendrils of white mist floating away, only to be stirred up by the next car trailing it’s own tail.  When cars met going in opposite directions, the ghostly tails would meet and entwine in a spiritual dance, spiraling up to the streetlights and arcing back down to the sidewalks.  I walked, each step sinking three to four inches into the soft cement, sucking at my boots as I lifted my feet to take the next step.  Hills were incredibly slippery and I performed comedy dance routines trying to keep my balance.  I was warm and took off my shirt. Suddenly, everything was double, two streets, two sidewalks and two for one cars racing blindly in all directions.  I grabbed telephone poles for balance and they squirmed at my embrace and it became a job to hold on, to not fall.  High Street was covered curb to curb with slime, inches deep, flowing in huge waves onto Bedford Street, separating into two rivers…

…crawling on hands and knees, a kitten mewing somewhere, following closely…

…stopped at a mailbox, unable to crawl around, stymied, scalding metal dripping onto my splayed hands…

…lying face down, close up view of a twig bellowing profanities in a tiny voice…

…fascinated by the pattern of a chain link fence in a yard I couldn’t recognize, how to get out…

…balancing on the high beam of a track rail, the sides flaking away, my feet resting on a razor sharp edge slicing into my boot soles…

…rolling painfully down a winding shale path…

Somehow, I got home, my clothes torn and dirty, bleeding from falls, by my watch, a three hour, five block trip from the bowling alley.   The couch felt properly soft but the walls and ceiling were waving in a crosshatch pattern that was beautiful to watch. Parents asleep, I got out Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Four Way Street and listened to Stills lament about freedom.  Bob came in from somewhere and asked “So, whudja take?”  He took my album off the changer and put on Cripple Creek…”A drunkards dream if I ever did see, Ohhh.”  He looked at me with humor and contempt and went back to wherever he came from; I didn’t miss him a bit, watching the walls as I was.

Monday, the word was out, Tom had had a bad trip.  The girls told everyone how I frantically ran in and out of the bowling alley men’s room, obviously scared to death and blubbering, and then ran quickly out the door, crying, without a word to anyone.  For five or six years afterwards, I would occasionally get flashes of insanity, objects would start melting, sounds would get loud and light would be too bright, and my heart would start racing, until it faded away again.  I worried about driving, about hallucinating in traffic and killing innocent people while I saw monsters.

My group drank our share of beer when we couldn’t get our drugs.  Each would get a sixer of something cheap and head off to the tracks, or to George Street Park, or again up behind the bowling alley and chug the beer as quickly as we could, often spewing it right back up, dribbling partially digested dinner and beer down the front of our pants and onto our shoes.  You learned to hold your beer because it got expensive having to buy two six packs for one drunk.  If you didn’t anticipate and plan for the possibility of tossing your cookies, you had to beg, borrow or steal from someone else, a dangerous proposition.

Somehow, a few of us heard that you could get memberships to the Ukrainian Club on Simmons Island.  Billy Bluteau and I went down and spoke to the club president.  I say we spoke, he hardly spoke English.  When we finally got it through to him what we wanted, he obligingly took our $5 dues and wrote us out membership cards, good for one year.  We’d then enter the club, brandishing our cards and sit at the horseshoe bar and be served Schaefer beer in 9 oz glasses.  No one ever questioned us and I was sixteen at the time.

My first really dangerous mistake was made one night we went to the club.  We went with Harvey, a kid my brother’s age who was even more troubled than most.  He loved hanging around with younger kids and showing them adult things, like how to get drunk and vomit in public.  We tolerated him because he was real handy at getting us beer and apple wine. Harvey, Billy Bluteau and I took our seats at the club bar one late Saturday afternoon and started knocking down Shaefers,’ playing a game of Eight Ball now and then for exercise.

 By about 9PM, we were totally shot.  Harvey lurched off to the bathroom for the ninth or tenth time and Billy and I sat together, hunched over our glasses like habitual drunks.  Suddenly, Billy started spewing sour beer and french fries onto the bar, swung around towards me in dismay, wetting me thoroughly with puke, finishing his turn, flopping off his stool and passing out on the floor.  The adrenaline that coursed through me at this exhibition partially woke me up, lifting the stupor enough to make me think that this was bad and we’d be busted and I better get the hell out of there.

I lurched out of the bar room, leaned against the wall in the hall, sliding along for balance, dripping Billy’s sour vomit, leaving a trail of it along the floor, and stumbled out of the building and down the front stairs, wanting only to get away before the cops grabbed me and put me in jail forever with only food and water, Goddamn it, Jesus Kee Ko, the bastards.

Memory is fragmented after that…

…I was in a ditch, muddy water up to my waist, shoving aside floating garbage, vaguely aware that I was in the abandoned canal bed trying to avoid the Goddamn bastard cops…

…two girls were shoving me into a store entry way, holding me up, shushing me:  “Stop that fuckin’ singin’ you fuck, the cops are right out there, f’ chris’ sake!”…

…sitting in the weeds, lost, a bush had grown between my straddled legs, I was pissing…

…waking up in the tub, muddy, vomit-y, pissy clothes caked with debris, 5 inches of dirty water, my father yelling “You’re a pain in my Goddamn ass, Jesus Kee Ko,” heaving me out and onto the floor…

…Sunday afternoon, hammering head, dry mouth, beating heart, house quiet, no one there.

By Monday night, the chill was down and my father could tell me what he knew.  Billy had been brought home by the police at 10PM Saturday night and was grounded for an indefinite time.  Dad was up waiting for me at 2AM Sunday morning, waiting for the police to report that they had found me dead, when he heard me stumbling on the back porch.  He sat in his kitchen table seat to greet me when I came in.  I managed to open the back door, stumbled in, tripped over the coffee table and fell onto the couch, out cold.  He picked me up, reeking of vomit, rancid swamp water, sour beer and garbage and dragged me upstairs.  He undressed me, wiped me down enough not to spoil the bed clothes, and put me into my bed with fresh shorts.  He went to bed and never heard what must have happened.  Somehow, I got up, got dressed in the ruined clothes, drew a bath and lay down in the tub and passed out again.  He found me that way, very slowly sinking down into the dark water, when he checked on me at 6AM, before my mother woke up and saw me.  My father told me this in a quiet voice, sighing, not yelling, but wearing his cloudy face to beat the band.

The next weekend, Billy and I overwhelmed our parents with our obvious remorse and got permission to go camping up in the woods beyond Devil’s Cave.  We assembled the proper gear and supplies as would be expected and hid them behind the Ballargeon’s shed.  Goddamn them if they didn’t appreciate us, we’d just leave home, that’s all, the bastards.  We called a taxi and had it take us to the Greyhound station in Albany.  I had been to Wildwood New Jersey with my sister a few years before and we decided that we would go there, get jobs on fishing boats and live a romantic life at sea, free from oppression and constraint; they’d be sorry they’d screwed with us.  A brilliant plan.  We got to Wildwood, went out on the boardwalk, asked around and were told we were stupid kids and go back home.  We spent the afternoon in a few head shops and I bought a pair of bright purple suede bell bottoms, and Billy bought a bong. 

We spent the last of our money for the bus ride home, were broke and hungry when we got to Albany and had to walk the 10 miles up Route 32 to Cohoes and home, about 3 ½ hours. We retrieved our camping gear and walked innocently into the firestorm awaiting us.  It turned out that my father, suspecting treachery, had gone up to the hills to find us.  He traipsed all over, calling us, and finally got to the stream where we always camped; of course, we weren’t there.  He then called the only taxi company in town and sure enough, they had picked up two teenaged boys and took them to the Albany bus terminal.  Brilliant! He lost our track in the myriad youngsters leaving Albany by bus and went home to wait, my mother and Billy’s parents besides themselves with a combination of worry and anger, a most volatile mix. We were both grounded for two weeks but managed to sneak out our windows nearly every night to drink a few beers and plan more atrocities.

Before these episodes, I had betrayed my parents’ trust only once.  A year ago the previous summer, my parents had the opportunity to go away with friends for a long weekend.  My oldest brother and both sisters were married and out of the house, Bob was living in some apartment near Price Chopper and my parents felt I was old enough and responsible enough to be left home with the chores.  I wasted no time and started telling everyone I knew to come Saturday night to the biggest party they would ever see. Harvey and some guy he knew agreed to buy the beverages; we took up a collection, three dollars each, pay in advance and got two half kegs, two cases of wine and an assortment of cheap gin and vodka with a grudging nod to soda for mixers.

Well over two hundred kids from all around the city showed up by five PM that Saturday afternoon, average age between fourteen and fifteen.  At first, I played the merry host, keeping pitchers of beer strategically placed around the house for the convenience of my ‘friends,’ but soon my sampling of my own wares rendered me foggy. At one point, I was upstairs, taking a break from the incredible volume of noise downstairs.  Harvey’s buddy was passed out on the floor of my bedroom; I was talking to two older guys I hardly knew who were congratulating me on such a great party, two kids younger than me naked and rounding third base on my bed behind me, moaning in unison.  Back downstairs, Maryanne threw up gallons in the dining room. Pizza boxes, leaking oil, were stacked on the living room couch. By four AM, only about thirty souls were left, mostly passed out entwined in beds or shoved into corners, breathing bubbles from the corners of their mouths.

At 9AM, those able to started cleaning up.  There were about fifteen of us who were relatively ambulatory and we swept, vacuumed, mopped, and filled over 30 large trash bags, which we hauled by hand three blocks and tossed into the Price Chopper dumpster, filling it to overflowing and running away before they opened.  By one PM that Sunday afternoon, the house looked great and we were smug thinking that we had pulled it off.

My parents got home at six PM and any reservations they might have had instantly evaporated as they saw their house exactly as they had left it, in fact cleaner.  They smiled at my obvious trustworthiness and sent me off to the movies downtown. When I got back, the atmosphere had changed dramatically.  The neighbor reports had come in of cars parked in hedges and thousands of rowdy teenagers pissing on lawns and fornicating in bushes.  I maintained innocence and strongly protested these false accusations. They were besmirching my good name and my parents, bless them, were inclined to agree.

Monday morning, to school as normal.  Mom started laundry and found 8 inches of stale beer in the basin of her top loader; clearly those filled pitchers of beer set there had spilled, over and over again.  Further inspection found remnants of Maryanne’s dried, but still pungent, vomit caked to the floor molding in that lone hard to reach corner of the dining room, and what are these grease stains on the couch?  Curses, foiled again, defeated by a few small details.  After the confrontation when I got home from school, my mom got sad and quiet and went to read on the back porch. My dad kind of enjoyed the idea of the party but was pissed at the lie to cover up, though both were evidently pleased at the otherwise thorough cleanup job, so I escaped serious punishment, reiterating that I had just had a few friends over, someone had brought some beer and what could I do?  The neighbors were obviously exaggerating, where was their proof.  Neighbors were always seeing hordes when it was just a few friends having an innocent good time.

I had really started to wet my whistle that summer when I was 14.  Harvey, around 21 at the time, would gather all us kiddies in George Street Park on a summer night and yell out “Let’s get this show on the road!”  We’d march the four blocks to Durso’s liquor store on the corner of Congress and Columbia Streets and we’d wait hidden around the corner while Harvey went in and bought bottles of Boone’s Farm Apple Wine.  We’d make the trek back to the park and drink them down and hoot and holler our young excitement until the cops were called and we’d scurry into the weeds and crouch, stifling laughter, while the spotlights played over the ball diamond and the Horsie swings.

Invariably, Steve or Nicky would climb the diagonal supports of the high tension tower, the rest of us pleading, “don’t touch the wires, you’ll get electrocuted, you idiots.”  Years earlier, maybe when I was eight or nine, Chris Barneau had climbed to the top and had slipped and fell onto the wires.  I was on our back porch helping my mother hang the wash out to dry and we had been watching him, my mother lamenting that “Someday, one of those kids will get killed doing that.”  She had no sooner uttered the words when a bolt of lightning and a crash of thunder split the air over the park.  Almost instantly, a flaming corpse dropped to the earth, landing dead center in the sandbox, smoking.  After what was left of Chris’s body was loaded into the ambulance and his hysterical mother was escorted away by the police, the park was closed for the rest of the day and we all got a talking to about responsible behavior and staying the hell off the high tension poles.  My dad said, “If you’re going to climb those things, just be sure to stay away from the wires, GODDAMN it, Jesus Kee Ko.”  No mention was ever made of the curious fact that our playground was nestled under a line of these dangerous things, open to all kinds of possibilities.

Harvey had chosen as ‘his girl’ a neighborhood girl named Jennifer, known to all as Pugsley, because her brothers thought she resembled that kid on the Addams Family.  She was all of 13, if that. In spite of our desire to keep Harvey handy, we felt uneasy about it.  To this day I don’t know of the extent of their intimacy but he did kiss her passionately in front of us, and they weren’t always in front of us.  A few of us tried to get her closest neighbors involved; Brendan Bluteau was already showing signs of his growing disassociation with reality and just smiled benignly when anyone mentioned this curiosity to him.  He’d grin, and pluck grass and grin some more, already drunk most of the time.  Billy confronted Harvey, but wasn’t big enough to fight him off.  He confronted the girl directly but she hated him and ignored him and so the situation went on through the summer and beyond.

There was one Cohoes cop who was aware of the heathen activities in George Street Park and who was determined to nip them in the bud.  We never knew his real name but referred to him as ‘Treeclimber’ because of his penchant for hiding up in the branches of trees, awaiting darkness and lawless teens.  Countless young kids were surprised half way through their six packs by a yell and a swoop from above.  Many a young couple wandering into the park after dark for some illicit nookie was shocked when Treeclimber dropped in front of them from the branches above, yelling “A Hah!” usually at a dramatic moment, if he could manage it.  He tamed a legion of lovers and beer drinkers, leading them to the shining path, and was a legend amongst the city’s teenagers, feared by some, ridiculed by many, hated by all, the defender of temperance and virginity.

Somehow, Harvey and Pugsley eluded the Treeclimber and, though we hated that cop, his catching them might have solved a problem none of us knew how to resolve.  By that next spring, we had outgrown Harvey, had found other ways of getting our supplies that didn’t involve his being the big shot, and we had moved on. Their affair ended around the same time as Pugsley started growing up and developing a body. Harvey lost interest in her and found a replacement from amongst the next generation of aspiring drinkers, saying to them every night, “Let’s get this show on the road!” and heading off to Durso’s. Billy and I watched him one evening that next summer, arm draped around a slat thin 12 year old, hand on what someday would be her breast, bottle of apple wine dangling from her fingers, cigarette in the corner of her mouth, a hard, glazed look in her eyes.  She was getting her show on the road.

Am Bluteau made life interesting, from a sociological point of view.  He was intense, single-minded, and he completely misunderstood every situation with which he was confronted.  He was known far and wide as a loose cannon, quick to take offense, and quick to take the offensive if he felt slighted or injured, often making mistakes of identification.  The Ducklyn twins once pissed him off somehow, now forgotten. He got back at them by sneaking up to Lark Street late one night to overturn the Korsakowski’s garbage cans, ostensibly because they lived within two blocks of the Ducklyns and thus, somehow, were responsible for the twins’ behavior.  He did it with enthusiasm, spreading rotting vegetables, meat scraps and used tissues all over their lawn, sidewalk and the street in front, getting the maximum coverage from the three cans of trash that had been set out for pick up the next morning.

That summer, Am decided he no longer wanted to live at home, and took up residence in the Ballargeon’s back yard.  The Ballargeon house was set up on an embankment off the street, and he set up camp at the highest point, right off their side porch, at a gap in the lilacs that allowed an unimpeded view of the road below.  There, he laid out his sleeping bag, radio and cans of corn, and listened to Boog and the Orioles late into the night.  On those mornings he woke up early enough for breakfast, he would mince over to the kitchen window and tap on the glass.  Aunt Flora, after her initial fright, got into the habit of cooking him up ‘pannycakes’ or ham and eggs and passing a plate through the window, which she’d have to eventually come out to collect as Am would never think to pass the plate back in, ever.

The Ballargeons were at a loss as to what to do; he never asked permission, he just camped in the yard.  Mr. Ballargeon informed the senior Bluteaus of the situation after a few nights but they failed to offer any insight or suggestions, in fact it was widely thought that they hadn’t realized he was gone.  A few of us would stop over to his perch to visit but he wasn’t interested in company and was a poor host, so we pretty much gave it up.  Even Tom and Dave Ballargeon stopped stepping out to see him.  After a few weeks, Mrs. Ballargeon started collecting his dirty clothes from the lawn and doing his laundry, mostly to keep the stench down I suspect. Thus the summer progressed, Am lived in the yard, listened to baseball, ate corn and chocolate chip cookies and was ignored by everybody.  He slept through drizzles and his sleeping bag got pretty funky; still he soldiered on, an urban Crusoe, following his own path.

Am stayed semi functional, at least, well into adulthood.  He secured and held jobs and was able to support himself later on.  Brendan Bluteau, however, was turning into another story.  We gave him the nickname Worm because he moved so slowly and spent so much time in the dark, you know, his room with the shades drawn and such.  He developed an early liking for the deadening effects of alcohol and certain drugs, becoming ever more quiet and uncommunicative as the years went by.  He had started out as a normal, if not energetic, kid.  He was almost exactly my age, Billy a year older, Am two years older.  There just was something left out of him and he clearly had no intention of growing up.

There was one murky incident where he got violent to some degree in their house and the cops came and took him to a hospital for observation.  The next time we saw him, he was even farther down his road and spent most of his time sleeping.  My father had the idea of taking him camping one more time and he came, but spent almost all his time in the tent, smoking one cigarette after another and staring at the ceiling, leaving burn marks on the tent floor.  He’d give a sheepish grin when we looked in to see how he was, and then lift his eyes away from us again and go back to the ceiling. We talked him into one game of horseshoes and it was pathetic to see him loft the shoe a whopping three feet, look away and wander back to the tent.  He was in and out of various facilities and when he was 18 or so, he took off to California and dropped out of our lives for good.

The Lyceum was a stand alone gymnasium operated by St. Agnes Church up on the hill.  We called it the Canteen.  During the school year, dances were held there nearly every Saturday night.  It was interesting in that it was the place to be and was a melting pot of all the kids in Cohoes, often the only way kids from Keveny got to see what Cohoes High kids looked like; we thought they were plenty scary.  Our routine was to chug a sixer up behind the bowling alley, puke a few times, and then head on up through the woods to the Canteen dance.  We’d wobble in and pay our two bucks, keeping our eyes and breath away from the rent-a-cops stationed at the door.

Another night of fragmented memory:

Finding myself talking to a fuzzy girl on the bleachers, intently, about something….

…passionately kissing the same girl, groping in the bleachers, two friends trying to pull me away…

…being dragged out the door by a chaperone, struggling ineffectually, the fuzzy girl shrieking behind somewhere…

…falling to the pavement, being helped up, over and over, a long, long walk…

…waking up the next morning on an unfamiliar couch, a spectacularly unattractive girl jostling me, a mean looking brother frowning at me, parents arguing in another room.

I refused an offer of breakfast, running out the door, realizing that I was a good three miles from home.  Torn clothes, pounding head, clotted eyes, and mossy teeth. Another long walk home.

Two weeks later, while intent on repeating the same process, a friend introduced me to Willie.  Willie was an ‘Auxiliary Cop,’ a volunteer arm of the Cohoes police that we thought was the real deal at the time.  Being drunk and meeting a real cop was way cool; I thought maybe I’d have an ‘in’ with the cops at last, and be able to have it ‘fixed’ if I ever got arrested.  Willie didn’t say much and it took a number of dances before I got to know him at all.  He was friendly, but not too much, he seemed official, but not too much, and it wasn’t until he caught us drinking behind the Canteen and shared our sixers that I suspected there was something a bit off about him.

Willie was 45 that year we were 15 and lived just up the street from the Ballargeons, just off the tracks.  We had passed his place hundreds of times and never suspected such a Shangri-la was so close and so available.  He lived with his widowed mother and she had built him his ‘Gym’ out back behind the garage.  Willie’s gym was basically a two room building divided into an actual workout gym with all kinds of free weights, a stationary bike, scale and other amenities, and also a cozy TV room where he and his hangers on hung out after the workouts to drink beer and brag about their sexual exploits.  Between the two was a well appointed shower room with a shower stall large enough for a five hand poker game or more than one showerer at a time.

Getting invited to Willie’s Gym opened up a new world to us and we quickly passed the word so that soon the Ballargeon boys, Billy Bluteau and others of the group were invited.  Am Bluteau was invited a few times, but Willie put him out because he threatened to throw a weight through a window when someone commented on how much of an animal he was.  My father was suspicious of the whole setup and insisted that none of us ever go there if we would be alone with Willie; of course we ignored him. Two and three evenings a week we would meet at the gym and in lieu of homework we would work out, some of us more going through the motions, and talk about women and prowess and the sizes of our ‘johnsons.’  Lift a few weights, ride the bike, use the inclined sit up board and then take a shower; Willie supplied the towels and shampoo.  Once we were considered regulars, we could also join Willie in his TV room; a boxing match on the tube, suck on a few beers, bullshit each other, Willie sitting in his chair, feet up, hand in his sweats, fondling himself.

Willie never pronounced your whole name.  I was something like Bezhe, Billy was Blu, and Tom was Barzha.  He would sit there, hands down his pants, manipulating himself, lording it over us, secure in his domain, dispensing wisdom, ‘Mim’ Darnley gave great blowjobs, especially if you were 13 or so, Asian women were built horizontally instead of vertically, and small johnsons could never satisfy a woman.  I thought I had a small johnson and so I took great care to take my showers privately so no one would see; last thing I wanted was to get an unsatisfying rep.  A number of the older regulars would cram themselves together in the shower and, though I never saw this, would compare and contrast each other and then parade out to the TV room together, loosely draped in towels, grinning.  Any of us could have joined them in the party but we were all just embarrassed enough to stay out.

In time, I stopped going to Willie’s. After the novelty wore off, I suspected that most of his regulars were basically sexual deviants, not just homosexual, which, back then, in our circle, would have been bad enough, but actually weird and nasty.  There was something very seamy about their talk and behaviors and I realized that my father had been on to something and it was time to disappear.

I saw Willie last when I was in my mid twenties; he was hitchhiking on Route 787.  He looked old and decrepit, but I stopped for an old friend.  He staggered to the car and said he needed to find ‘Blethashama’, and clearly didn’t know me from Adam.  I told him who I was and that we spent a bit of time together back when, and he just stared at me and said he had to get to ‘Blethashama’ because he needed his ‘Muthapshah’.  I tried to drop him at his house but he got hysterical, crying about Mommy and insisting we get to Blethashama.  I finally got him to get out of the car downtown across from the police station and brought him in, hoping the sergeant might recognize him from his Auxiliary police days, but no one was around from that long ago.  He was docile enough and they led him to the drunk tank. I was told he’d been wandering the streets for years and had no money left and they would keep him until he was sober and let him out again.  To wander some more, searching for Blethashama.

I also fairly quickly outgrew the Committee. I think I had the reputation among outsiders as being a diehard druggie though the rest of the heads really knew I was mostly a fake.  Sure, I tried the drugs, pretty much anything and everything, but actually really hated it. I couldn’t be happy hanging out on street corners at midnight, waiting to meet someone who would have something for me, drifting around corners when patrol cars cruised by, looking miserable and stupid, in retrospect.  My thoughts of those times are the stuff of nightmares. Running pathetically down the tracks eluding Ron, running away for a day, perspiring around girls, stupidly following the advice of a piece of shit asshole priest; not memories to make one proud. In the fall of my junior year, my behavior went off on a tangent.