Road Dog by Dov Davidoff

Author:Dov Davidoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

26

MIAMI CHUCKY

With this head of testosterone-fueled ambition, I was headed into high school, incautiously searching for that elusive jungle panther that is “cool.” How, I wondered, could this exalted state be achieved in as little time as possible? I decided to approach my neighbor Chucky for advice on the subject.

Chucky was four years my senior at seventeen. He had just dropped out of high school to take a job in sanitation as a way to satisfy his all-consuming ambition to purchase a three-wheeled motorcycle before his eighteenth birthday.

Ambling over, looking suitably deferential, I stammered my question to him. “Any advice…? About to go into high school. First year, ya know…”

Chucky took a deep breath before arching a leg onto the chrome front bumper of an old car that had exchanged its wheels for cinder blocks. His boot, and with it, his body and head, were reflected in the bumper in such a manner as to evoke Ichabod Crane. With wind-tousled black hair, Chucky, gazing off into the horizon, spoke one line: “Chicks like thin leather ties.”

My first and last experience with beer also took place at the foot of this great thinker. Chucky, ever the forebear of Socrates and Plato, suggested we “slam some beers,” but not before inhaling some especially toxic marijuana—Skunk Bud, if memory serves. Chucky whooped around our patch of dirt like a yellow-crowned night heron in search of a mate. He encouraged me to guzzle five or so cans of a beer so awful that even craven alcoholics would have had to run out of mouthwash before considering it. My body suddenly desired nothing more than a separation from itself. I began projectile vomiting.

Afterward, delirious, I trespassed across several of my neighbors’ scruffy mini-lawns to the home of the object of my desire, Nicole, a girl of about fifteen with unusually large breasts, who I was certain would return my affection. Chucky followed. The home was dark, its occupants—six sisters and two parents—were sleeping. My legs trembled as I began crowing upward in the direction of Nicole’s second-floor window, cheered on by my deranged flightless bird of a neighbor. Not only did she not return my sentiment, but after hearing me holler, “Show me your tits!” for the seventh time, a deep, resonant male voice began issuing ultimatums, on the order of “Leave, or I’ll kill you.”

I think about how Ricardo would’ve responded had he caught me, drunk, crowing up at the second floor of that house. He would’ve put a stop to it and told Chucky to get lost, but he wasn’t there to save me from myself.

* * *

Early September sun burned bright on the morning of my first day in the ninth grade. Marching into my high school’s main office with the confidence that can only come from wearing a black leather jacket, multi-zippered parachute pants, and a thin red leather tie, I changed my name to Steve. Putting the past behind me, I decided I would create a new, improved, invulnerable me. Like other formerly chubby kids, my body was evolving into something lean, hard, and sinewy.

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