Authors: Tom Winton
I was blown away. There are no words that can describe how crushed I was. If there were, I wouldn't use them here. I wouldn't want you to come close to feeling what it's like to have your soul slaughtered the way mine was. In all likelihood, you have already, or someday will, do your own time in the cold, dank dungeons of true heartbreak.
A block of cold ice hunkered in my gut. I followed my feet as they slowly carried me away from Theresa's house. When I was two or three doors down from it, I stopped. I looked back for a long moment, one last time. Obscure to most eyes where it stood amidst this row of brick conformity, to me Theresa's place was totally different than the rest, a place that had come to be so important to me during the happiest time of my life. To me it was a temple, a temple that housed the queen of Queens, the love of my life, shit, man, my entire life itself.
My chest started heaving and my shoulders twitched with each sob until they were bouncing violently and Theresa's house became blurry. I slowly turned away and began walking. Dead inside, I trekked to the bus stop one last time, tortured the whole time by so many wonderful memories.
The remaining three days were the worst. I had nothing but time on my hands and Theresa, Theresa, Theresa on my mind. Non-stop anguish filled all my minutes. The clock was steadily erasing my remaining hours. Come Monday I'd be sworn into America's killing machine. But I wasn't thinking about the political or moral aspects of what we were doing in Viet Nam, or even about the possibility of dying there. All I was capable of thinking about, all that mattered right then, was where I might find Theresa. And after considerable snooping and prodding, I came up with a tip. I'd found out, I no longer remember from who, that she and her girlfriends had made plans to go to a club in Bayside – Ungy's - on Saturday night. If I couldn't hook up with her there, I'd still have Sunday and, if it came down to it, I'd spend that entire Goddamned day on her stoop. As far as I was concerned, Theresa's mother would have to call the cops, a lot of them, the whole damned precinct, to haul my skinny ass away. I hoped that wouldn't be necessary.
It would just be me, Donny, and Jimmy going to Ungy's on Saturday night because Stevey had to go to La Guardia with his parents to pick up his brother Paul who was returning from a one-year stint at an air base in Germany. The bus to Bayside was conveniently routed up Sanford Avenue so we didn't have to hoof it all the way up to Main Street. We caught it right on the corner. When we boarded it around eight o'clock, we instinctively bopped directly to the back. That's always the safest place to drink on a city bus, nobody can sit behind you. In a seat as wide as the bus itself, we proceeded to trade slugs from a half-empty (or half-filled, depending on your nature) fifth of Four Roses that Scully had lifted from his old man's stock. By the time we got off the bus in front of a sprawling discount gas station on Northern Boulevard twenty minutes later, the bottle was empty. Not wanting to be encumbered by it, we left it on the bus. The light on the corner was red, so we expertly dodged and dashed our way across six-lanes of chaotic, night-time traffic before climbing the curb in front of the belly-bomb-factory. I knew the White Castle was on the same block as the supermarket where Theresa's father had been gunned down but didn't realize till now it was right next door. Looking at its entrance, thinking about the tragedy that took place there, and anticipating seeing Theresa again, made my whiskey-warmed stomach twist and turn and flop around deep beneath my belt. I was buzzed but wanted to get drunk, real drunk, real quick.
As we headed down Bell Boulevard toward Ungy's, we hunted for a liquor store. Just like College Point's Broadway, Bell was lined on both sides with small businesses. Mom-and-pop stores and shops with a generous smattering of saloons, mostly Irish, were here also, extending clear down to the movie theater a good ten-minute walk away. The street was a scaled-down version of Main Street, Flushing, but a few rungs higher on the social ladder. The stores were cleaner. No housing projects here. Hardly any apartment buildings at all. Bayside was more like the burbs, like Nassau County, Long Island, even though the town sits just inside the eastern reaches of Queens. Though we were on a main thoroughfare, we knew from experience that the side streets here were quiet, that they were buffered by high-crowned trees and well-maintained, true middle-class homes, with driveways. To us lowly apartment dwellers, Bayside was high class.
We found a liquor store and each of us bought a pint of Boone's Farm for eighty-nine cents. With Ungy's only a block away now, we turned the first corner, bagged bottles in hand, and ducked into an alley behind a Greek restaurant. Under the cover of darkness, blocked on one side by a dumpster big as an elephant, we started guzzling. Hell of a mixture, whiskey, chased with apple wine. Back then we'd drink anything. If you were there, you remember the motto, "If it feels good, do it!"
Soon my body had gone limp and the top of my head went numb. Not the ideal condition to be in when hoping to reconcile with a loved one. But I was tight. What if she and her friends changed plans? What if they decided to go somewhere else? "Come on, guys, let's go," I said, exhaling the last hit off my cigarette, flicking it at the dumpster. "We can finish drinkin' this on the way over there."
It was getting late and I wanted to get on with this.
Before we went inside Ungy's, I almost tossed my cookies out front when I forced down the last of my Boone's Farm. My stomach was filled and stretched with the whiskey-wine brew, and it was backed-up to my throat. My head pounded in sync with the music that boomed from the bar out onto the street. All three of us were painted green by the neon 'Ungy's' above the entrance, and I felt green on the inside too. I bent between two parked cars to stand my emptied bottle next to the curb and started retching and gagging over the gutter. I thought for sure I'd get sick. I hoped I would. I knew from experience I'd feel better if I did. I shoved a finger down my throat but still no luck, only a long green string of bile that stuck to my finger.
Since there was no live band at Ungy's, there was no cover charge, no bouncer at the door checking proof, collecting money, stamping hands. We slithered and slid through a wall-to-wall assemblage of humanity before settling next to a half-wall that separated the bar from the dozen or so tables and the dance floor beyond them. The place was like thousands of others on any New York Saturday night. Young people were everywhere. Beneath a looming, blue, smoke-cloud, they engaged in loud conversations, competing with all the merriment and the 'Rascals' belting one out on the juke about 'Good Lovin''. These were party-animals in their late teens to late twenties, playing hard after a grinding week of school or work, guys and girls wearing bells, polka dots, paisley, army fatigue shirts, headbands and bracelets. Hundreds of them, standing cheek-to-jowl, drinks in hand, rapping away, all squished tight inside this club. Out on the wooden dance floor, that couldn't have been any bigger than our living room at home, there must have been fifty people grinding away to a slow one that just came on, a single, huge, solid mass of human cells swaying this way and that beneath the slo-mo strobe lights. It was obvious that Ungy's owner, or owners, believed in 'supporting' their local fire inspector.
Striking a match, a new Marlboro bouncing in his lips, Jimmy asked, "Ya see `er?"
"No, not yet," I said, as if I were only thinking the words while intently scanning the crowd.
Then, his voice energized like it had been zapped with a thousand volts Donny blurted, "DEE CEE, LOOK!" He threw a finger toward a table fronting the dance floor where couples were mauling each other now to the Stones' 'As Tears Go By'. "Isn't that one of her friends?"
It is the evening of the dayyyayyyayyy,
I sit and watch the children playyyayyyayyy...
"Yeah! That's Regina! Her friend from school! The one we went to the prom with!" My heart was racing, pounding uncontrollably inside its ribbed cage. "She's here, man! She's gotta be!" There were more chairs around the table than it was designed to accommodate, all of them occupied, except two, side-by-side. Was Theresa sitting there with another guy?
Then Donny jerked his head in the direction of the dancers. "Over dere. I see `er. She's dancing wit' some dude."
This was it! The alcohol, the blaring music, all the loud background conversations, Theresa there somewhere dancing with another guy, I was frantic. My voice gushing with urgency, I yelled."Where, where is she?"
"Right behind that asshole wit' the plaid pants and the short hair. Man … you're fucked up … here," Donny said, palming the back of my head, pivoting it in the right direction.
Sure as hell, there was Theresa cheek-to-cheek, belly-to-belly with another guy.
Without a word, I started toward them, but Jimmy grabbed my shoulder from behind and said, "Hold on. Where you goin', man? Wait till the songs over, then go talk to her."
"FFFUCK THAT!" I said, yanking away from my friend's grip, taking off, pronto, through the labyrinth of tables and people. No stopping me now. Instinctively, like any self-respecting, dominant male in the animal kingdom, I was going after what was mine. Amen! Simple as that. I saw and I reacted, pure instinct, forget the thinking process. There was nothing to evaluate. That sonofabitch had his arms around my girl.
Some short-haired dude and his squeeze were dancing in my path. I stepped left, they swayed left, I went right, they swayed that way, I shoved them out of the way. Clenching each other tighter, for stability now, they struggled to remain upright.
The chick let out a yell. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, ASSHOLE!"
The music played on.
I sit and watch as tears go by-yy-yy ….
Theresa and her partner unglued themselves and spun around to see what all the ruckus was about. When she saw it was me, shock flashed across her lovely face, then, just as quickly, those exotic eyes became enraged. She knew there was going to be trouble.
"DEAN! NO!" she shouted, throwing my name like a warning and a reprimand both, sort of like when you catch your puppy pissing the carpet.
Then her new friend turned his pretty-boy mug in my direction. He was another short-hair, must have been Mister plaid pants' fraternity bro. He'd turned just in time to see my balled up, boney fist coming with his name on it. I connected, his legs jellied, and he went down. Just that fast.
I thought it served him right. I didn't trust anyone who was still dressing collegiate. My own wardrobe had metamorphosed to the revolutionary clothes of the late 60s, plain clothes that made a statement, told the world who you were, what you thought of the 'establishment' that kept the little man down. This guy was obviously a part of that select group, or his daddy was anyway. Besides being with my girl, I saw in him everything I hated, the type of college boy who had no idea what it was like to sweat tuition, or the draft. Someone who'd never had a toothache in his life. A silver-spooner who never once saw the inside of a mid-week, empty refrigerator, never had to fill his empty belly with triple-decker mayonnaise sandwiches on white. A dandy who probably had a new Vette parked outside and lived out in Port Washington too. But the bottom line was he was dancing with my girl. And no matter how he was dressed, what he had or didn't have, I would have cold-cocked him just the same. Nevertheless, his appearance made my drunken assault that much easier.
Girls screamed, and the dance floor crowd dilated instantly. Theresa was pushing on my shirt with both hands as I tap-danced on the guy a couple of times with my size elevens.
"STOP IT, DEAN, STOP IT!" she screamed.
That's when I felt this beefy arm hook me from behind. Some bear had locked it around my neck and was dragging my sorry ass backwards, on my heels, through a carpet of peanut shells.
Though I hollered, "LEMME GO MUTHAAAFUCKA!", with my neck constricted as it was, half the volume stayed inside my chest, sort of like Marlon Brando in the 'Godfather'. My eyes were bulging in their sockets and my breath was hard coming.
Then, two more goons grabbed my arms, helping the force behind me. Amazing how much strength you can muster when you're really, really pissed. Six feet tall and only a hundred and forty-five pounds, I was giving the three of them all they could handle. Jimmy and Donny watched closely. These guys were BIG so they knew to lay low, unless they got too aggressive. If the bouncers would have started hitting, they would have gotten beer bottles or glass mugs over their heads, no matter how big they were.