I spent the first day or so after my encounter with the drunken Irishmen lolling about in a Demerol haze. I thought, This drug definitely has a high abuse potential. I went to Mama Lu’s every evening and came home with enough leftovers to fuel me for the next day. I was on the mend. My wound was healing and I was testing it daily without pushing it to the point where I thought the wound would open. I missed my friends from Hillsdale terribly. We called ourselves the Gang of Four and bonded after I kicked this bully’s ass who was tormenting Steve. 

I thought about the day we met. Mama pulled up in front of Brookdale Elementary with me in the front seat with her. We were in her dark blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air. She was really proud of that car. “You got your lunch?”

“Check.” First day of Fourth Grade. New school. No one at Brookdale knew I’d been moved up two grades at North Woods Elementary. I was pretty big for my age, average size for a big nine-year-old.

“You got money for the cafeteria in case you need somethin’ else?”

“Don’t worry, Mama. I got everything. I’ll be fine.” I remember wishing at the time that I believed it.

She reached over and pulled me into a tight hug.

“Mama, come on.” But I didn’t struggle. It didn’t really bother me.

She finally relented and let me go and I got out. Through the open window, “Call home if you need anything. If there’s no answer we’re at the bar.” We’d moved six miles south to Hillsdale from North Woods. My parents had risked everything to buy that bar. “You got the number?” I gave her the blankest, most clueless look I could manage, then started laughing which caused her to start laughing. She shook her head and drove off, still laughing. I turned around and headed for the front of the school. 

It was ten minutes before the first bell so I thought I would wander about. I went around to the side of the playground that wrapped around the two story school on the east. It was all concrete with all kinds of play structures, slides, swings, monkey bars. I thought, It’s bigger, more kids, but not that different from North Woods. I’ll probably be ok.

I made my way to Miss Goodwin’s Fourth Grade class and was assigned a seat in the back next to a smaller kid. He seemed to be a little nervous and wouldn’t make eye contact with me initially. I decided not to push it. He looked like he might jump if I talked to him. There was a big girl with light brown, almost blonde hair who’d been assigned to the back with me and the nervous kid who she was obviously friends with. She told Miss Goodwin she couldn’t see the blackboard clearly so was moved up to the front row. She seemed to be very happy about the move. Very happy about being next to the girl she was next to. The nervous kid seemed less than thrilled about her departure. 

When Miss Goodwin called the roll I learned the names of the nervous kid, Steve Seymour, the big girl, Ava Skolenski, and the girl she was very happy to be next to, a dark skinned, raven haired girl named Maria Flores. I heard everyone else’s names but didn’t really take note. Just those three kids. I thought, So far, so good. No bullies.

The second day was pretty much a repeat of the first but on the third day I was slowly making my way to class and I thought, This is no big deal. I don’t know what I was worried about. Then I saw a clump of students gathered on the playground and I was curious.

“Come on Stevie . . . Stevie, you little sissy, cough it up! Don’t make me kick your ass,” a big, stout boy with almost no forehead and longish, dirty, dark hair, was saying to a much smaller brown haired kid who was starting to cry. It was my classmate, Steve Seymour. He was digging into his pants pocket. I was incensed. I hated bullies.

I started toward the bully and at that moment my fannings, unbidden, kicked in. At that point I had no control over when they would appear. I saw several scenarios in the cards, all ending with me on the ground, getting the shit kicked out of me . . . except one. I dropped my new notebook and walked up silently behind the bully, grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head back and kicked the backs of his knees forward with my shin. Just like Al showed me. This, I’d seen in the fannings. As he fell backwards I completed the move, sweeping my leg, kicking his feet out from under him and he landed hard on his tailbone. That sweeping leg motion, kicking at the backs of his knees was the one action in the fannings that didn’t get me hammered . . . like a nail.

“Aw, Jesus!” he cried. He was obviously in pain, but his blood was up. He jumped up and came at me but his weight was unbalanced, too far forward. I thought later that he was probably flexed at the waist to ease the pain in his butt caused by him falling on his tailbone. I moved and tripped him as he went by, aiding his flight with a hard shove, sending him sprawling on his face. His chin was bloodied and this time he took his time getting up and came at me more slowly.

For the first time since my impetuous involvement with the situation I had a chance to truly gauge his size. The guy seemed about four inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier than me. I thought, If he gets his hands on me he’s going to take me apart. There was no time to think, no time for reason. I threw up both hands, flapping them, and gobbled like a turkey. This was the move my brother Al showed me. I thought it was ridiculous when he showed me but I tried it anyway. The bully looked up at my hands and received the full force of my right foot to his nutsack. This doubled him over but before I had a chance to knee him in the face he just sat down, clutching his crotch and moaning. He was done. The patented Al O’Taney move had appeared nowhere in the fannings.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said, breathing heavily as I led Steve away. The two girls I’d noticed in our class were following us. I looked over at them as they came up on either side of Steve, who was breathing deeply and sniffling.

 The larger girl, Ava, was consoling him. “It’s okay, Steve. You’re okay . . .” then looked back at me and half smiled. The other girl, Maria, looked back at me, and gave me a big smile with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen as she handed me my notebook. The girls stopped at the door to the Boys’ Restroom and I followed Steve in.

“You gonna be alright, buddy?” My heart rate had finally normalized after the adrenaline storm. Those were the first words I’d spoken to Steve.

“Yeah. That big guy whose ass you just kicked is Garth . . . Garth Brooks. He usually waits until after the first week before he starts stealing my lunch money. I guess he was hard up a little earlier than last year.” Steve splashed water on his face and dried it with paper towels. Four or five inches shorter, he looked up at me with intelligent, sensitive, green eyes and thrust out his hand. “I’m Steve . . . Seymour.”

“Mickey O’Taney . . . Jeez, my first week at a new school and already I’m in a fight. You Hillsdale kids sure know how to show the new boy a good time.” We both broke up laughing. 

“Yeah, we know how to party at Brookdale!” 

We were laughing still as we exited the restroom and found the two girls waiting. “Mickey, this is Ava Skolenski and Maria Flores. Ladies, this is my new friend, Mickey O’Taney.”

Ava and Maria were joined at the hip and had been since Kindergarten. They had adopted Steve in the First Grade and those three were a unit when I met them. By the end of that first week we had become inseparable, referring to ourselves as the Gang of Four, the G4, and started hanging out with each other after school. Mama and Papa were always at the bar so there was essentially no parental presence at the O’Taney home, a large, rambling house. Consequently, the G4 gravitated to my house, dubbing the basement “The Cave.”

It’s hard for me to say why we in the G4 liked each other so much. Other kids made fun of Ava, calling her Fat Girl and Polock. They called Maria Spic and Wetback. They called Steve Sissy and Faggot. So, I thought, maybe the three of them were drawn together by mutual persecution. So, what was my role? Was I the Protector, punishing bullies? Maybe. In their presence Steve was relaxed, spontaneous, bright. He was a different kid than the one I’d sat down next to on that first day. The three of them together were wickedly sarcastic and creatively funny. I thought they were just about the best real life comedy act I’d ever met.

I had begun taking self defense classes at a gym in Beaverton. It was on the bus route to the home where my string quartet rehearsed and was run by a middle aged Eastern European Jewish man named Riggo Chomsky. He was a calm, wiry, five foot nine inch tall, dark haired, swarthy man who carried himself with a relaxed awareness, like he was ready to do combat at any moment. The term Krav Maga was never mentioned by Riggo but the skills taught by him used most of the concepts of that Israeli self defense system. The gym was named simply Defense Gym and I was there at least once a week. Riggo stressed nonconfrontation, running away from a fight whenever possible, but the skills I learned in his gym, when running was not an option, were entirely compatible with the Al O’Taney school of street fighting. 

                                                                                         ***

A week later, in New York, I got my stitches out and it was time to look for work. I had talked with Vasily, my landlord. “I’ve been looking at a number of places for a job,” I lied. I’d been lying low, healing. The only thing I knew how to do was be a musician performer and that was unthinkable. Music equaled panic attack. I had shlepped some things around and swept up for the Mirianovs and had done one math tutoring session with Sofia. I had no agenda, just restless, but the Mirianovs decided I was a good kid and rewarded me with bread and rugelach . . . really good rugelach. “You know this town better than I do, Vasily Borisovich.”

He thought for a moment. “I know a guy.” He wrote down a name and an address in Hell’s Kitchen.

I introduced myself to Yuri Akhmatova, the foreman in a warehouse on the docks in Hell’s Kitchen. Yuri was about 5 foot 8, wiry, with thinning, dark hair and a very youthful face. I thought, Where did all these Russians come from? He hired me on the spot, which was good, since I was running out of funds.

“I can use someone with your Russian skills, da . . . I am the only one who can talk with the Russian workers and the Americans. It will make my job easier. Plus it looks like you have a strong back, da. And you are a friend of Vasily Mirianov, da?”

“Da. When do I start?”

“See that stack of crates? Move them into the warehouse and put them three high on the empty pallets in Section A.”

“Ok, boss.”

Thus began my job on the docks in Hell’s Kitchen. After a few months I was driving a forklift. We only dealt with cargo after it was put in our area by the longshoremen, the Teamsters. We had our own organized crime family. Russians. I asked Yuri one evening in the middle of my shift who they were.

“Best you don’t know, Misha. You don’t know them. They don’t know you. You really don’t want them to know you.”

“Understood, boss . . . do they know you?”

“Misha, you don’t want to be that guy who asks too many questions, da?”

“Da . . . right.” I nodded my head solemnly.

I worked all shifts, rotating every few weeks, and the place ran twenty-four hours a day. We moved a lot of goods off that dock. I believe some of it was actually legit. With my work, there on the docks, I only had to focus enough so that I didn’t hurt anyone like dropping a crate on someone’s foot. That was enough to keep Rivka at least in the back of my mind. But on the subway ride home and in my shitty little flat my world was once more dark and empty. I saw beautiful women everyday. It was New York. But they only made me think about her, my Rivka. I had no sex drive. I was a fifteen-year-old boy with no sex drive. I went to Mama Lu’s maybe twice a week. As far as I was concerned the only thing New York offered me, besides Mama Lu’s, was the absence of triggers and that was enough. 

Triggers. That’s why I had to leave Hillsdale. Everywhere I went there was a reminder of my best friend, my girlfriend, my lover, Rivka. Triggers, places we’d been, music we played together, triggers which frequently led to thoughts of suicide. I often thought of those early days when we first met.

“What’s wrong, little brother?” Sally Anne, twelve-years-old, four years older than me, was being uncharacteristically sweet as Elvis sang from the radio in the living room . . . “Hard headed woman, soft hearted man . . .”

“What . . . it’s, mm . . . nothing.”

She sat down next to me on the front porch steps and put her arm around my shoulders. “Jeez, you’re getting tall . . . Come on, unburden.”

“What’s with you? Being nice all of a sudden.”

“I know. Crazy, huh? It’s just, I haven’t been a very good big sister lately . . . so, what’s up? Where’s your gang?”

I sighed. “All out of town, even Steve . . . with his family.”

She was incredulous. “Everybody?”

“Maria’s with her Papa and grandparents in Guadalajara. Ava’s with her parents and brothers in Minnesota, like a family reunion. And Steve’s with his parents and his half-brother in British Columbia. His father insisted they go. I think he’s trying to keep the family together. 

“Sally Anne, that family is really really messed up. His parents can’t stand each other, Steve can’t stand his parents, they barely speak to him. The only person in the family he sort of likes is his big brother, Eddie. I can’t imagine being in a family like that. Can you?”

“No, Mickey, I really can’t. I mean, we have our problems, but sounds like, compared to Steve’s family, we’re Ozzie and Harriet.”

“So, who are you, David?”

“I’m Rickey, of course, the pretty one . . . or maybe I’m Ozzie’s illegitimate daughter from a sordid affair with Clara, down the street.”

I looked at her aghast. We both burst out laughing. 

“So, I’m Rickey?” I said.

“No, you’re their adopted son, Wilbur. He hasn’t appeared on the show yet.” We both burst out laughing again. My sister was very funny.

A station wagon pulled up with young girls hanging out the backseat and tailgate windows, screaming at Sally Anne to “get a move on.” “

“Sorry, little brother. Gotta go. You’ll be ok.” Then she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Try not to be so fucking introspective . . . I mean, for fucks sake, Mickey, you’re only eight . . . and . . . I’m really sorry . . . I thought you knew you were adopted.” She looked at me, her mouth tight, fighting to keep a straight face. “Goodbye, little brother.” She kissed my forehead, stifling laughter.

“You’re a . . . you’re adopted,” I said, under my breath, realizing what a lame comeback it was as she walked away towards her ride.