Everything Is Wrong with Me (22 page)

Billy was a blowhard and never one to back down from a fight. But he had enough of a head on his shoulders to realize that things would not end well if too much aggression was used. As the dozen or so black kids approached my dad and Billy, there was only one viable thing to do to avoid getting jumped by all of them, which was to call out the guy who threw the snowball and ask for a one-on-one fight. “I got no problems,” he said, “wit’ none of you. I just want the guy who hit me in the face. I want him to be a man and own up.”

Remarkably, this nearly always works. What Billy said follows a careful formula that has been crafted through generations of fighters when something is about to go down. “I got no problems wit’ none of you” can roughly be translated to, “Let’s think about this for second, because you know that I didn’t do anything wrong here.” It’s about perspective: even though you or yours harmed me, I don’t harbor any ill will toward your group. But by changing the dynamic to
I-You
(that is, I have no beef with you) versus
You-Me
(that is, you wronged me), it’s much less accusatory and more conciliatory. I’m trying to be reasonable, and you should, too. Next is the call-out: I want only the guy who harmed me. This is another statement that is meant to show the use of reason and fairness, but it is slightly more aggressive because it places the ball squarely in the court of the person who committed the offense. He’s now said, “I don’t hate you guys, and I’m trying to be fair, so all I want is the guy who harmed me,” a statement which by its very nature requires a response, one that will result in fight or flight. Finally, “I want him to be a man and own up” is the most aggressive of all, a direct challenge to the perpetrator’s manhood. With this line, the result is almost guaranteed to be a fight, since if the offender refuses to “man up” to a challenge, especially in front of such a large contingent of his friends, which so outnumber the friends (in this case, friend) of his potential opponent, he will suffer a severe loss of respect, a commodity more valuable than anything else in the neighborhood.

I’d seen scenarios similar to this many times growing up, and the result was almost always the same: a situation that could have evolved into a brawl is averted and a fair fight between two guys, one the slighted, one the slighter, commences. This was no different, and the kid who hit Billy with the snowball stepped forward, a small kid, built remarkably like Billy. A circle tightened around the two of them—my father, rangy white guy, watching his friend Billy, rangy white guy, standing around with ten black guys who were not very happy to be with them.

More than half of street fights, probably even closer to two-thirds of them, don’t have a clear winner. They usually follow a similar pattern. The fighters will square up, like boxers coming from their respective corners, and do some dancing in and out and throwing some feel-each-other-out punches. This is more show than anything, as one guy tries to out-intimidate the other with his aggressiveness and speed, and will last only a short while before the two guys grip each other up. If the two fighters fall to the ground, the fight will more than likely end with a winner, as one guy will get the advantage on top of the other guy and pummel him until he’s pulled off. But if they stay standing up, they’ll typically stay locked up and holding each other, throwing quick sneak punches, possibly head-butting, breaking off, and repeating the dancing and the gripping until it’s broken up.

This particular fight was a strange sight. Whenever you’re in a fight, real brawlers know that it’s best to take off your shirt. If keep your shirt on and your opponent is able to get your shirt over your head, you’re in some serious trouble. Not only will this cut off your vision, but it will incapacitate your arms by trapping them in the shirtsleeves above your head. So the other guy can basically tee off on you, his one hand holding the shirt over your head and his other blasting away, and if you’re not dropped in three or four punches, you must have a metal plate in your head. Billy was a real brawler for sure and would have known this, being a veteran of dozens of fights. But he had his heavy longshoreman’s gear on, which he could not step out of. These were both a blessing and a curse. While his coveralls lessened the impact of any punches thrown at his body, it limited his mobility and speed, causing him to move with the grace of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Billy was a little guy whose toughness was based on his speed. Inhibited by the coveralls, he couldn’t move like he needed to. While the full-body, inch-thick coveralls would have been great for a big guy whose MO was to grab and crush his opponent, it hampered Billy.

After a while of these two smaller guys locking up and throwing ineffective punches, it was apparent that this fight wasn’t going anywhere. “All right, all right,” called one of the black kids, who broke into the circle with a friend to separate his boy and Billy, and my dad followed them in.

“Fuckin’ coveralls,” Billy seethed when they were away from the group. “I’da killed that motherfucker if I didn’t have these on.”

“I know, I know,” my dad offered, “but let’s get the fuck out of here.”

As they turned to walk away, Billy mumbling about how he could’ve killed the guy, he really could have, someone shouted “Hey!” from behind them. They turned to see one of the black kids approaching them.

“Yo, did you go to Southern?” he asked, looking at Billy, walking toward them. Southern was one of the local public high schools in South Philly and Billy had in fact gone there a few years before, but he had gotten thrown out and had not graduated. When he responded that yeah, he did go to Southern, the black kid said, “My man!” and extended his right hand for a handshake.

As he walked to Billy with his hand out for a shake, the kid raised his left hand, exposing the knife he was holding, and brought it quickly across Billy’s right shoulder and chest. The knife ripped into Billy’s coveralls, striking him in the upper chest. It continued along Billy’s body, the blade making a quick ripping sound as it careened across his torso, tearing his clothes. The knife got caught up in the coveralls, dropped from the assailant’s hand, and clanged down to the frozen, snow-dusted ground. Both Billy and my dad took off, racing back to the bar. The attacker and his gang fled in the opposite direction, taking cover in the side streets and the darkness.

It was on the sprint back to the bar that my dad heard the sound. It started softly at first, a muted hush, but then got louder, turning into hearty roar. Billy was laughing. He was, for certain now, a true lunatic.

And he continued laughing at the bar. The momentum of Billy’s body falling backward and the thickness of the coveralls prevented the blade from going too deep, so the wound wasn’t much—a simple cut on the upper part of his chest. While it might be a stretch to say that the thick longshoreman coveralls saved his life, it certainly saved him from a trip to the hospital and some stitches. The way that he carried on at the bar, you’d think that Billy had just hit the game-winning home run in a bar league softball game. Billy regaled the patrons with the story over another drink, contending over and over again, “No way he stabbed anybody before. That was his first time. He ain’t never stabbed nobody before, because he doesn’t know how to do it.” This was way more excitement that my dad had signed on for when he agreed to do out for a drunk with Billy, and it was about time to call it an evening. As soon as he finished his beer.

Before he could finish that last beer, the thick wooden door of the bar swung wildly open and two police officers stormed in, guns drawn. “Nobody move! Hands in the air!” were their orders. They raced down the bar, checking the few patrons’ faces. They stopped at my dad and Billy.

“This is them,” one of the cops said, and placed them in handcuffs. My dad didn’t speak, but Billy was irate. “What are you arresting me for! I was the one who was stabbed! What the fuck is your problem!
I
got stabbed!” He started stomping his feet like a child, repeating “
I
got stabbed!” and both he and my dad were put in a patrol car.

In the car, the cops were not very forthcoming to Billy’s repeated pleas for an answer. Billy and my dad were working on a good cop–bad cop routine of their own, with Billy playing the role of screamer and my dad asking calmly what the problem was, why they were being held. Finally, one of the cops responded: “You’re wanted for questioning about an attempted murder.”

When a police officer drops the words
you, wanted,
and
attempted murder
in the same sentence, it’s really time for some serious self-evaluation. That would have to be put on hold for a moment, because the patrol car pulled into the parking lot of Hahnemann Hospital, the same place my dad had gone years before when he broke his neck, and Billy and my dad were taken out of the car. They were led through the bowels of the hospital, still in cuffs, and up to the fourth floor, the Intensive Care Unit. They stopped at room 418 and were brought inside.

Sitting on the bed was a man of indeterminate age. He was conscious, but though the television was on he wasn’t watching it. His face was the color of eggplant and swollen over. He had stitches on both of his eyelids and around his eyebrows; dried blood caked his mouth and forehead, and a large line of more stitches extended from just in front of his left ear down his check, ending at his jawline. His hands were swollen, and his arms were bruised and connected to an IV and other tubes. He looked blankly at the two cops and two prisoners standing before him.

The taller cop stepped forward, grabbed Billy’s arm, and asked, “Is this him?”

The guy in the hospital bed looked at Billy, and then at my father, and then back at Billy.

“Nah, it ain’t him. It’s his brother.”

Billy had two brothers; he was in the middle. His younger brother, Tommy, was the near complete opposite of Billy. Physically, he was a giant of a man, standing well over six feet two and 250 pounds. But he was also unlike Billy in disposition. Billy was a brawler, a lunatic; Tommy was a quiet, nice, churchgoing guy who kept to himself. If Billy’s younger brother, Tommy, was the opposite of him, Billy’s older brother, Pat, was a more amped-up version of Billy. Pat had the same small build as Billy, but everything else was turned up. Later, my dad explained it to me in the most concise way: “Billy’d beat you up, but Pat…Pat’d fuckin’ kill you.” And apparently, according to the beat-up man in the hospital bed, the authorities, and later a jury of his peers, that’s what Billy’s brother Pat had tried to do just a few hours before.

Pat was married to a woman named Linda. Linda got Pat a pretty crappy early Christmas present that year, when she told him on Christmas Eve, when his younger brother Billy and my dad were drinking at the bar, that she was having an affair. Pat had suspected as much, but that didn’t lessen his anger any. He took a good shot at Linda, hitting her with a punch that sent her flying to the wall, and then grabbed his coat and headed out. Pat then paid a visit to the man who was making a cuckold of him, the same man who sat in the hospital bed before my dad and Billy. The cops were on the lookout for Pat when a tip came in that he was drinking at a bar at Fourth and Moore. Since Billy looked like Pat, Billy was picked up by the cops. My dad was picked up because he was with Billy. This where our case of mistaken identity comes from.

Both my dad and Billy were then taken to the precinct for questioning but later released, having no knowledge of what Pat did that day. My dad, now sober at this point, got a cab back to the bar, where his car was parked. He got home just before ten to find his wife, his parents, and her parents sitting around talking about the baby, who had just been put to bed. The room stood still and went silent when my dad walked through the entryway into the house. He sat down in his chair, took off his boots, let out a sigh, and said, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today.”

That was my first Christmas. A good one, I think.

Epilogue

Hooker Hunting

W
henever I go back home to Philly, I go hooker hunting.

Now I don’t actually “hunt” the hookers, per se. I realize and appreciate the fact that hookers are women—wonderful, complex, yet misunderstood women—not game on some wildlife reserve. I’ll be the first to concede that hooker hunting is not like hunting at all, really. I think I only call it “hooker hunting” because I like the alliteration.
*
Although it
is
kinda like a safari in that it is done at night and in a truck, but that’s about where the similarities between the two end. Well, also, sometimes when push comes to shove, you have to shit in a bush. But we’re getting off track here…

’Cause every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man.

Instead, hooker hunting is more like
watching
than
hunting
. It’s about observing; studying the hooker in her natural habitat. As an ornithologist might watch a rare robin or finch, so do I study the hookers of Philadelphia. I track movements, mannerisms, and social interaction. It is in this way that I have much in common with the scientists you see on the Discovery Channel, although I’m not sure if the scientists on the Discovery Channel secretly rub their private areas while watching their subjects. I don’t watch much of the Discovery Channel, so I can’t say for certain.