Suburban Misfits

The bulge in my pocket isn’t because I’m glad to see either one of them. The three of us hardly talk the way we used to in the old days. We’re all closing in on 30 and still haven’t figured out what to do with our lives – except to know we don’t want to spend the rest of eternity driving around like this like we did at 17, searching for girls who’ll pay attention to us. Of the tree of us, Hank alone still thinks of this as fun, aching to get back that feeling of camaraderie he claims we had when we drove. He doesn’t understand the difference between happiness and mutual misery. It is his idea to head to the shore in the dead of winter, as if he believes we can pick up girls there when the competition is less fierce. Pauly doesn’t want to pick up girls, but goes along with the scheme because he’s tired of staying home alone and figures we’re better company than nobody, an opinion he alters the minute we hit the highway and has to listen to Hank’s ranting. Putting the tape recorder in my...

    Tiger Stevens nudges me in the ribs when he finds out I just moved into the rooming house across the street from our favorite bar. Guys I drink with always talk about the girl that lives in the three-storied Victorian house across the street. Now I’m living there. I never get it, always confused by the nod and wink as if I am supposed to know something I don’t know. I guess I’m a bit of a snob. I drink with the boys I attended high school with but always assume I won’t end up like them. Sure I load trucks like they do as some Fairfield warehouse, yet I secretly scribble masterpieces into notebooks after house with the assumption I might some day get discovered. Sure, the girl, I met my first day in the rooming house is intrigued by the notebooks and asks me to read some of the contents to her each time we meet inside the house. I never do. I keep thinking I’m not ready. I tell her maybe next time, and really hope I am ready next time. Tiger hoots more when I tell him about...

  Pauly’s jacket hangs from outside the door when come into the carport, an annoying little detail the distracts me as I unlock the door to my apartment next door. I have chores to do before work; my dog needs walking, my laundry washed, and I need no morning mysteries to distract me. I’m tempted to knock on Pauly’s door, think better of it; he hates being disturbed for no reason, perhaps the rain earlier had caught him unawares, and he’s left the jacket out to dry. There’s an odd yet familiar scent, of mothballs and cedar chips recalling my grandparents’ house and the stored clothing they dragged out of closets for each change of season, a memory that has nothing to do with Pauly, and yet lingers in the air, raising more questions I decide can wait until noon when Pauly usually rises. I do not have to wait, finding him on my way back with the dog, wearing the jacket I saw, ducked into a narrow space in front of his door, struggling to put on a tie, hair slicked back – without the ...

    s C ott, the assistant manager of the Quick Chek on the border of Garfield and Wallington breaks out the cold cuts the minute he sees Pauly coming, or if morning, the buttered hard roll and milk (not cream) for his coffee. Pauly is as predictable as the cycles of the moon, insisting on a buttered roll and coffee each morning, then Turkey and Swiss on rye in the afternoon. Scott is a cross between Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen, so mild-mannered Pauly can’t help picking him, that mocking type of tease he used to reserve for Alf, but which the rest of us won’t tolerate, and Pauly missed the fun. Paul, who looks as frail as a half-starved bird, isn’t the health nut he claims he is, smoking up a storm even when he ought not to, vowing to quit if he can, if only to keep the rest of us quiet, grubbing cigarettes from Hank, even when he hates the brand Hank always smokes, buying his own only when he can’t grub enough or when Hank’s not around to feed his habit. Scott indulges Pauly...

  Dwayne gives out hotdogs to us as if dispensing communion, this high priest of a highway slop joint we come to for free meals and words of wisdom, Pauly says he takes with a large grain of salt, never completely trusting him, even when commiserating late into the night on philosophical theories about angels and the heads of pins, we all drawn to him as if is on a mission from God, Pauly in particular seeking out something in him he can’t find in himself. I’m always scared when he and Pauly come together, matter and anti-matter teasing us with the threat of calamity we know must eventually bring an end to the known universe, each a snake charmer in his own right, until we are confused as to which one we should follow, Pauly, the master manipulator whose silver tongue sways us one way, Dwayne the deep thinker who stuns us with sudden inspiration. Pauly comes here for more than just the free food, seeking something he can’t divine for himself, while Dwayne aches for something from P...

  “I don’t know why he’s picking on  me,” Pauly says as his hands shake around the cup of Dunkin Donut coffee, he makes me buy him so he can calm down. One of Pauly’s customers at the Fotomat booth warned him, saying that the local Washington Township cop was looking to bust him. “He’s up on top of the hill where the road from Mount Arlington runs down into the highway before the circle I need to take to get to work at the mall,” Pauly said, meaning the booth in the parking lot of the mall, not the mall itself. “It’s as if I have a target on my back the way me and Charlie had when we got busted in Montclair,” Pauly says. “Only I’m not carrying pot the way we did back then, and I’m certainly not driving around in a cherry-red Volkswagen the way Charlie always did.” “Don’t you think driving a moped in his part of the state makes you stand out?” I ask. “I don’t care if I stand out, as long as it gets me to work and back,” he replies. Pauly doesn’t care how stupid he l...

  Liz looks just like David Bowie, if Davie Bowie was a girl. She loves his look as much as she loves his music and comes to the club each night looking at much like him as Pauly tries to – the band insisting he put on makeup to fit in with the new hip trend of looking gay. He hates the look as much as he loves the music; he loves the money he gets for singing even more, loves the pot the money buys -- which is why he agrees to go to Liz’s house in Montclair after our gig because she says there will be pot there. I go because I’m the one who’ll have to drive him home if Hank craps out and Garrick gets as drunk as he usually gets at these kinds of parties, only I get stuck driving Liz there first, so I don’t get lost and leave Pauly stranded. “She’ll show you the way,” Pauly tells me. “Then you’ll be able to find your way back.” This isn’t a part of Montclair I’m familiar with, not so ritzy as the places on Upper Mountain Road, but not so down and out as the rooming hous...

  Pauly must be desperate, agreeing to come with us to TGs, knowing how Hank nearly killed me the last time. Maybe it’s because Jane went west to see her sister, and Pauly finds us better company than none at all. He wants to get drunk and warns Hank not to, even though he knows Hank won’t listen, and counts on me to drive if they both drink too much. Pauly claims he doesn’t like booze, and only tolerates it when he can’t find pot. “I don’t need to feel as stupid are you guys are,” he claims during the ride north. I can’t recall ever seeing him drink anything before this but wine, and then only to impress a girl – back when I was still in the army and made me dress in my uniform to buy some. TGs is located on the New York side of Greenwood Lake, attractive because the drinking age there is 18, where until recently, it was 21 everywhere else. Hank is thrilled. He’s still miserable from breaking up with his girlfriend last year; and finds we spend more time with him now that we’ve br...

When Mary tells us, she has the Big C, she doesn’t mean the vitamins she has been selling me and Pauly over the last few years. Pauly’s face pales his knuckles get white from the tightening grip his has on his coffee cup in one hand and the greasy paper bag with his buttered roll in the other. Mary, a pleasantly plump woman older than us by at least two decades, reminds me of my mother or even Garrick’s aunt, only instead of wearing flowered dressed or an apron splattered with spaghetti sauce, she generally wears a white shirt, and black slacks, and thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses she only wears when taking inventory. She knows us both by name, just as she knows everybody that way, waving at them as they pass her store window in the Garfield strip mall on their way to Quick Chek at one end, the Polish bank at the other or the laundromat next door. She has no bad words for anyone, full of cheer and recommendations for our living a full and healthy life, things we might take to make our l...

  Rolly tried to kill himself again. With so much practice, you would think he might get good at it. But it never works. While I just met him, I know he’s one of those people who’ll keep on trying, collecting an A for effort when he fails at everything else here in college. Just why he wants to end life at age 20 still puzzles me. I’ve just turned 30 and I think three times that won’t be enough if I stay healthy and sane. Women love Rolly. He’s the Latin lover they always dreamed might seduce them. The only problem is: he’s a gay Latin lover, which spoils the illusion a little. Rolly’s favorite movie is “Harold and Maude,” and while he hates funerals, he loves the idea of slaughtering himself in a different way each time. The EMT drivers have a lottery going to determine what method of self destruction Rolly will try next, and how close Rolly will get before the doctor’s have to yank him back to the living. Maybe Rolly just wants us to feel sorry for him. It’s hard. This is a commu...

  Scene: Hank and Kenny floating along on a river in a boat   HANK: Hey, Kenny, the engine’s stopped.   KENNY: No it hasn’t. But it doesn’t sound well.   HANK: The river looks deep here and too rough to swim to shore   KENNY:  This is your fault, Hank.   HANK: How do you figure that?   KENNY: You’re the one who said we ought to go sailing, that girls loved sailors.   HANK: I thought it was a good idea at the time. And you were always going on about your how your grandfather built boats and all   KENNY: My grandfather never taught me how to run a boat, only fix them.   HANK: So the girls gathered. That’s why they left.   KENNY: They left because they didn’t like the idea of getting trapped in a boat with us. I don’t blame them. God knows why I let you talk me into going sailing anyway.   HANK:  I didn’t think we should waste the deposit. Did you see the look that dock guy gave us. I thought he would throw us in the riv...

    Garrett, wearing his usual Cheshire cat, grin tells me he needs a strong back to help him help his uncle move the refrigerator from the third-floor apartment in the building next door. “Pauly is useless,” he says, even though as it turns out the refrigerator is to replace the one that burned out in Pauly’s apartment, “and even if he wanted to help, he's too puny.” Chet, Garrick’s uncle, is puny too yet wiry and strong, just not quite strong enough to handle a project like this alone. Since Pauly, months behind his rent, is on the verge of eviction, I wonder why Chet bothers -- though someone will move in after Pauly and need a refrigerator, so, I agree. Chet is upstairs when we get there; his hand truck sits at the bottom of the first flight down from the third floor with he at the top, rope wrapped around the big white body. He says we will hold the ropes from the top as he steers the beast down the steps from bottom, scooting it along the edge of the stairs on its side ...

  “You'll do fine, Pauly tell me as his long fingers straighten up the last details of the uniform, he insisted I wear to Ann’s fete.   “Just tell them you're headed to Vietnam where your old man died.” “My father didn't go to Vietnam; my uncle did, and he came back just fine,” I say although fine is the wrong word. “They won't know that,” Pauly assures me. “They'll believe what you say because you're in uniform.” “That doesn't mean they'll sell me wine,” I say. “I'm barely 18.” “They will. it would be unpatriotic for them not to.” “I would be lying,” I say as we stand outside the liquor store Pauly had Rob drive me to in order to get the wine he promised the girls he would bring. This is my third day of a three-day pass and I have to get back to Fort Dix before nightfall, a fact Pauly is aware of and has promised to get Rob to drive me to the bus that will get me back on time if only I do this small favor for him “It's all about wine women a...