(two) Mr. Jack Goff

(two) Mr. Jack Goff

The buzz of the latest in Fall fashions was not relegated only to the runways of Paris, London and Milan. Every child in the public school system of Clayton went through the anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance of the subtle negotiation that took place every Fall when it was time for their weary parents to buy their kids new school clothes.

Mid-August came and parents carted their progeny off to Hudson’s, J.C. Penney’s, or, if the kid was poor, Montgomery Ward or, worse, K Mart. Crammed into a convection oven of a car, they’d bitch and moan about sticking to their sweaty sister or to the napalm-hot vinyl seats. Sibling would smack sibling, parent would try to cover yet somehow still silently communicate their rising dread that this shopping jaunt will end badly. Sadly, the drive to the Mall was the most pleasant thing about the whole trip.

One would think that the cool air-conditioned womb of the department store with its calming musak would’ve settled the hot, palpable friction between parent and child, but it had the opposite effect. The change from blistering hot parking lot to supercool manufactured air effected the very checks and balances in the human psyche. Pleasant society broke down. The family unit divided against each other and in a public place no less. Oh, yes, there was more fun to come.

Every child’s:

“Mom, can we get this?”

...was met with a stern look and a slow shake of the head:

“No”.

This led to a cold:

“Fine”

... and then a mumbled:

“You never let me get anything cool”.

“What did you say young man/lady?”

The trenches were dug. The Battle was on.

The Dad or Step-Dad would go AWOL almost immediately, throwing his hands up in the air in disgust and heading off toward the tools, tossing a “You deal with it. He’s your son” back as a parting dagger. This left the Mom, face red, eternally sad look on her face as if to say she never signed on for this shit.

The dance that ensued took all of two hours. Each side conceding points to their advisary in hopes that it all would end quickly. Each side took the concessions as further attacks and reboubled their efforts. It was as if the combatants had regressed to a more primal state where communication was just a series of grunts and nods.

The Boys wanted stuff with sports logos all over it. Didn’t matter what it was, could’ve been underwear, as long as it had a football team logo on it. And, jeans. Calvin Klein, Sergio Valenti, Jordache. Anything but Levi’s. Unless they were “Movin’ On” Jeans. Nothing else. And, Adidas, Converse, Nike or Pumas shoes. Mom, on the other hand wanted her boy in chinos and a nice broadcloth buttondown. She wanted her little boy to dress like the man she should’ve married.

The Girls, like the boys, wanted jeans in all the aforementioned brands, adding only Gloria Vanderbilt, Sasson and Chic. They had to be tight. So tight you had to put them on wet and blow them dry on your body, risking being late or a yeast infection, whichever came first. The process would mean getting up at 6 a.m. every morning. These jeans were the 1980’s version of the corset, forcing young girls to suffer greatly for their beauty. Tight skirts, too. So tight that they would cause hip displasia. And, short. So short that any passing boy could almost make what day of the week underpants the girl was wearing. They also wanted tee shirts. These were also tight. The girls wanted to dress like the sluts they knew the boys liked. Mom wanted her little girl to dress like, well, a nun. Long skirts and turtlenecks were the preferred choice. In Momland, all the girls in the school should pass for Martha Graham. Eventually a bargain would be struck somewhere in between and the girls would plod off to school in knee-length skirts and short sleeve blouses; looking a bit like backsliding Mormons.

It took a public confrontation to put the whole shopping thing into perspective for the young ones. Commands were barked so the sales clerk could hear or the Moms would feign leaving the store saying firmly, “I’ll be in the car”. If this didn’t get them moving, they would resort to the closer. An arm would be grabbed tightly and jerk to within earshot, then in a firm, low whisper came:

“Do you want me to take your pants down in front of all these people and give you a lickin’?”

This had less to do with oral sex than with getting your ass whupped.

A weak but bitter “No” was issued by the broken child and the battle was over.

Things were picked out hastily and paid for. The ride home was as silent as a morgue in slow season. Alone in their misery, the children would plot. They would by the stuff they really wanted, the short skirts, the black concert t-shirts, and keep it at a friend’s house. They would dress to please their mothers at home, and dress to please themselves on the way to school. Anything else they really wanted, but was too expensive, would wait until Christmas.

As it was with Fall, likewise the post-Christmas Fashion show delighted with all its alpine flair and cozy ski-lodge softness of acrylic blend ski sweaters and wide wale cordorouy. But, that was merely a prelude to the Spring fashion show that heralded the coming of Summer Vacation. Kids itchy for summer and made unstable by being penned up in the tiny aluminum sided faux-clapboard houses lining the bleak treeless streets were jonesing for warm weather. These kids, pink with Spring Fever would come to school in shirtsleeves and shorts when the snow was all but gone. The boys looked like adolescent flashers with their three-quarter length winter coats completely obscuring the fact they were wearing shorts. These kids, quite certainly, were children of single parent families because, as the teachers would mumble aloud during their Recess smoke break.

“No self-respecting Mother would let her children leave the house dressed in Bermudas, a Starsky and Hutch shirt and green, metal shank rubber boots in Mid-March.”

“Child Protection Services should be notified”, another would say as they tipped another Marlboro Light from their leatherette combination cigarette case/coinpurse.

These kids, boys mostly, looked more like clam diggers in the mudflats of Cape Cod than pimply-faced Midwestern sixth graders. These were the same kids that brought cold Government cheese sandwiches and an occasional apple to lunch to avoid eating the dread and embarrassing “free hot lunch”. These were the students that Our Poor Jake tried desperately not to make direct eye contact with for fear they’d recognize one of their own kind trying to pass himself off as middle class and out him.

The other children, the ones with good Mothers or, at least, Mothers who pretended to care, wore thick woolen mittens, scarves and hats, which were, perhaps, even handmade. The girls wore pastels and the boys wore a myriad of bright primary and secondary colors, except yellow and pink. The down coats and vests, the Moon boots, even the mitten or glove clips were gender specific. Everything was as it should be. Boys on one side, girls on the other. They could wait ‘til junior high to start the awkward dance toward each other and discovery.

The boys favored sports paraphernalia because the cool girls favored the boys who favored sports paraphernalia. Ring binders, folders, pencil cases, pencils to go in the pencil cases, erasers and book covers. Pictures of players with nicknames like, “White Shoes”, “Sweetness”, “Bubba”, “Spiderman”, “The Snake” and “Mean Joe” graced every inch of the school supplies. Football was the sport of choice for the school year. Sure, spring would bring a few very muddy games of baseball before the Summer Recess, but Football was king of the playground.

And so, our little boy Jake had been ushered, by the most meager of Good Fortunes, to the threshold of acceptance into this status symbol-oriented world by a chance gift of a Football hat from his father. With silent expectation of the glories to come, he sat in the split bucket seat of the shit-brown Dart, his breath puffing opaquely across the safety glass. This was finally his turn down the runway.

He never had new Fall clothes; none that he cared to show off anyway. His Mother had always packed him and his older sister up in the shitmobile to buy clothes at Montgomery Ward, Monkey Ward they liked to call it, to by their Fall clothes. At the time, these were places you’d buy your tools, your lawnmower, a major appliance or perhaps a fake Christmas Tree, not, for the love of all that is good in the world, school clothes. This past year, his older sister had begun working as an assistant to the florist at Tuxedo Floral and thus would be buying her own clothes this year, clothes that would allow her entré into the Glittering World. Jake, however, was still forced to brave the stiff-legged, deep blue Toughskins with the polyurethane re-enforced knee and the velour zip-up sweaters with the big ass metal zipper rings. Or, God please forbid, the boot-cut (he would never be allowed to wear bell or elephant bell cut) crushed red corduroy, or worse polyester, pants with the white piping on the ass pockets. He had worn this horrible garment, these trousers from the 5th circle of Fashion Hell, to school once and after nearly killing himself with embarrassment, he purposely-by-accident fell into the oilpatch that slicked the middle of his driveway, permanently ruining the pants.

“Aww, look what you did to your pants. I just can’t buy you nice things. Take ‘em off, they’re going to the Good Will”

“Great, Mom, like the poor aren’t ashamed of their plight enough, you have to dress them like rodeo clowns, too?” This he said to himself for he never sassed his Mother. Not until he had, at least, started lying to her about where he was going and that was years away.

But, now, seated under the warm dry Lions hat, he was about to be lifted from the mire of his existence and be placed on probation in the Kingdom of Suburban Culture. How he acted today would forever change how he was perceived. He would be noticed, maybe for the first time, as a sexual being, or at least what passed for sex in the sixth grade.

He stepped into the brisk air and into the world awaiting him.

* * *

It had gone famously. He strolled the short hall to his room with an easy grace, approaching full swagger with a hint of shyness. All heads turned when he entered with the hat on his head. Even Matt Lark, the man-boy forced to sit in the corner behind the medical clothes changing screen because he “had a problem concentrating”, was enthralled enough to look. Matt suffered from what would be later termed as “Attention Deficit Disorder”. Ms. Garter called him a “Mr. Fussbudget” which warranted such quarantine.

This kind of ridicule was standard behavior throughout the public schools of Clayton. Not one of the Oakland County Teacher of the Year recipients ever came from Clayton’s school system. Clayton’s tax revenue didn’t allow the school system to hire the cream of the education crop. Ms. Garter was more of the chaff of the crop than anything else. Just picking up a check while gleaning enjoyment from destroying young lives by issuing forth casually caustic remarks from her mentholated cigarette-smelling piehole.

He had gone through recess and was now waiting patiently in his seat for the last bell to ring, coat and hat on like everyone else, except Matt Lark, who always had to stay after class and help Ms. Garter “clean up”.

This meant let her molest him.

Once, a few of the boys had pretended to walk home and doubled back to catch her putting her hand down the front of Matt’s pants. He saw them and smiled a smile that wasn’t as much a smile as it was a bitter recognition that the position he was in was enjoyable yet frightening. They asked him later if he wanted them to tell the principal, but he said no. Because that would get Ms. Garter transferred, not fired, just transferred to another school in Clayton. And, Ms. Garter seemed to be the only teacher that really cared about educating the man-boy Lark.

Jake was walking home with the rest of David Polks’ entourage or ‘gang’. They would walk by the Thomas’ big black fence, from behind which came the feral and unnatural barking of the big black Doberman. The Doberman was the fiercest dog that the children knew because Rottweillers weren’t yet fashionable as a home safety item/child killer in the suburbs, yet. Past the bikers’ house with the big motorcycles in various states in disrepair littering the inside of the open garage. Periodically one or two of the boys would be goaded on a dare into running up and touching the fender or handlebar of one of the hogs, immediately upon which everyone would run, fearing the big leatherclad man-beasts that lived there. Past the Baptist minister’s house, his wife seated with her knitting on a green strap and aluminum lawn rocker, a stadium blanket spread across her ample lap. Past the Hanlon’s whose whole front yard had been trampled into a mass of mud by their giant Siberian Husky, Thor, who lay quietly panting; waiting for the children who would stroke fist-sized clumps of hair from his thick coat.

It was past Thor when Jake walked right into a trap. A trap set by David Polks and his Uber-Kommandant, Jack Goff.

Jack Goff, perhaps because his name was a homonym for masturbation, was a certified Badass. He had to be. With a name like that, you either fought your way through life or you laid back and took whatever it gave you. Or, you committed suicide. Apparently his father, John, wanted to name his son after him, but he wanted his son to have a separate identity apart from his father. However, he didn’t take into account the sound of his child’s name. Maybe, he was thinking that Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” made quite a lot of sense. Give the boy a fucked-up name and he just about raises himself. Whatever the case, Jack was always referred to by his first name or Mr. Goff. Only the teacher said his full name. And, when she did, no one laughed. There was dead silence in reverence for the boy who had been so cruelly named.

With the moniker forced around his neck like a “Kick Me” sign, Jack rose in the ranks of the suburban fascist demagogues. He ruled his neighborhood block and a few of the other kids blocks, with an iron hand and an unquestioned loyalty from the children who lived in his realm. By the time he reached the sixth grade, he had beaten up a ninth grader, a feat that no one ever before achieved. He had a scar above his right eye and he was the first to wear a muscle shirt to school. Couple that with a huge black pocket comb with a handle that protruded from the pocket of his supertight Levi’s bell bottoms, the untied white Adidas hightops, and the perfectly feathered butt-crack parted hairdo, and you had one bonafide motherfucker.

David Polks, a slightly smaller, preppier version of Jack Goff looked back towards the kids following him and his eyes fell on Our Jake. Jake thought it was a recognition that he had arrived as an Accepted One, but Jake was sadly unaware that that glance was a sign; a Judas Kiss that singled him out as the weak animal of the pack; singled him out for the takedown and the kill.

Jack Goff was standing, leaning against a Maple its prematurely turned leaves blazing blood red in the afternoon sun. Jack was talking to Shelly Geller, the petite--most of the prepubescent sixth grader girls were petite--brunette who would later bear the bastard child of the high school football coach. David Polks’ nod forced him to break off his convo with the future Miss Promiscuity and start his imposing swagger toward the mass of boys.

About six feet from the Polks entourage, Mr. Goff barked the following phrase:

“Nice Hat.”

Everyone stood still. All talk ceased. It was an interminable silence, like the beginning of Sergio Leone’s “One Upon A Time in the West”. Several of the boys were wearing hats. They looked at each other, terrified. The boys without hats forced the breaking smiles from their face for fear of being singled out and beaten down.

“You with the Lions Hat.”

That narrowed it down to only Jake.

“I’m gonna steal your hat.” In one move, he swiped it from Jake’s crown and he twirled it on his index finger.

“Watcha gonna do? Hunh?”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless he goes so far as to call me a...

“Faggot.”

The word clanged in Jake’s ear like a cast iron gauntlet. He was now at great risk of losing any standing he had in the complex web of social strata that supported him. He was on the precipice of dropping through and being exiled to walking home alone everyday, eating lunch alone and eventually, wading into a large crowd of strangers with a high-powered automatic weapon and mowing them down before he turned the gun on himself.

Suddenly, in Jake’s nostrils, it smelled like Summer.

* * *

It was a warm day in August when he was only 10 years old. His older brother, Craig was home from a long day at the Shell Gas station on Main Street. He was lying across the burnt orange burlap sofa dragging on a Vantage Menthol watching Kid Creole on the tube because it was Elvis Week on the Four O’clock Movie. He was still wearing the grey uniform with the gold Shell on the breast pocket. The sleeves were rolled up showing the large fierce eagle tattoo on his left upper arm. Bulging from the roll was the rectangle of the hard pack of smokes. In one hand was an eraser pink rag deepened to almost red in the center with oil. In the other hand was the dismantled remains of what Jake would later find out to be a two-shot 25 caliber Beretta. In accordance with their Mother’s wishes, both workbooted feet were firmly planted on the floor.

Jake had come in, sweating profusely, face red as hothouse tomatoes, hands balled into neat fists. He intended to charge to his room, slam the door, throw himself on his bed, bite his pillow and scream into the fiberfill until he fell asleep from exhaustion. He was halted mid-charge by his brother’s nonchalance as he cleaned the pistol. Up to that point, Jake had only heard about the gun like he had heard that the Miners’ dog had contracted rabies and had to be put down; it was accepted as fact but it was never really verified as truth.

“Who was it?” Craig’s question struck Jake full in the chest.

‘How could he know’?

“Carlo Peroni”

“That fucking guinea? Italians are tough, kid. They’re born fighting. And, if they ain't fightin', they're fuckin'.'”

Jake made his way toward his room.

“You want some advice?” Craig was sitting up now and he had placed the gun back in its box. He wiped his hands with the rag, using the oil on it to pull the gas station grime from his nails. Jake could see his knuckles, callused in equal amounts from grinding them into car underbodies when the wrenches slipped as from grinding them into the Hai Karate-scented chins of “those candyassed Squares”. These “Squares” turned out to be Mack and Jay, brothers of both Mr. Goff and Mr. Polks, respectively.

“Come with me”.

Jake followed Craig to the side door and soon they were standing in the driveway between the house and Craig’s olive green and gold metal flake 1970 Plymouth Duster. The vent to the drier downstairs pumped moist hot air out of the side of the house. The steam ran through Jake’s legs, making him sweat even more.

“Look at me.”

Jake locked on his brother’s eyes. He respected him, nearly as much as his father, perhaps more so because while Jake was sure his Dad could kick some shit, Craig actually had, in recent memory, kicked a great deal of shit and was very good at it.

“When you got a guy, looks like he’s not gonna back down...it looks like you’ll actually have to get down to fighting instead of that pussy shoving match bullshit the fags in high school do...the first thing you want to do is get the jump on him. You need the first punch. Because when all the shit’s done. Nine times outta ten, it’s the guy who threw the first punch that everyone says won the fight. You got me?”

Jake nodded.

“Now. This is how you get the jump on the guy.” Craig stopped and looked over Jake’s left shoulder at someone coming up the driveway. Jake turned in the direction Craig was looking and saw no one. When he turned his head back his gaze was blocked by Craig’s scarred fist not two inches from him face. Jake could see the thin white whirls of scar tissue wending their way across the terrain of his brother’s knuckles. Jake could also see his brother’s point.

* * *

“The fuck you looking at, Kid.” Jack Goff’s voice was a grinding teenage mess of high and low tones that raised the hairs on Jake’s neck. Mr. Goff started to turn his head to where Jake was staring.

Jake’s small fist turned it the rest of the way.

He had done it. He got the jump on him and now he was in the shit. He had connected with the chin of the Great Jack Goff and he felt the rush of what that meant. He watched him stumble backward slightly, try to catch his balance and collapse clumsily to the pavement.

Jake had no time for reveling in the fortuitous moment. His opponent was up in a nanosecond and gripped the hat between two hands. He growled a cub-like grunt and pulled his hands apart. In one hand was the hat and through the fingers of the other bunched claw peeked the Honolulu Blue and Silver pom-pom.

From somewhere deep inside Jake’s chest there issued forth such a hideous sound that later, after the skirmish, the people who actually heard it, went hoarse trying to recreate it in their retelling of the fight. The sound exited his mouth in a bent howl as he charged at the hand holding his beloved Lions hat.

He couldn’t stop his progress after Mr. Goff stepped aside and jerked the knit cap out of his reach like a matador. Jake bulled right into the dark bark of a large elm tree, his head striking the side with a dull thud. He fell to the grass beneath him and rolled to his back. He was vulnerable now, but he didn’t process this because his head was playing the very end of It’s A Wonderful Life, the glorious giant bells clanging gleefully away, loudly and proudly. Above him the tree’s bare woody fingers swam into and out of focus as he tried with desperate intensity not to barf up the macaroni and cheese and limp hotdog he had for lunch. The bells were replaced in an excruciatingly long crossfade with children’s laughter. The loudest of all the children being David Polks.

When he opened his eyes, Mr. Goff was standing over him, the pom-pom fist cocked back for a bone-jarring blow to the eye.

“You leave that child alone, do you hear me?” It was the angelic Ms. Grey, the minister’s wife, hollering at the height of her soprano voice.

“You Goff boys have been nothing but trouble. Get away from him. Haven’t you got better things to do than beat up on poor kids”.

This well-timed reprieve embarrassed Jake more than the headlong dive into the tree. More than any pummeling Mr. Goff could administer with his bony hardball-sized fists. It embarrassed him because she didn’t say it like “...on poor kids” But, more like “...on poor kids”.

Mr. Goff turned back to Jake, snorted like a prize-winning hog, spit his slick, pale-green treasure into the Lions hat, crouched and forced it down around Jake’s throbbing head. He then took the pom-pom and stuffed it in Jake’s mouth. Jake could see the feet and knees of the children walking around him, away from him as he struggled to his feet. He steadied himself against the tree that caused his near-concussion and waited for balance to slosh back into its proper position inside his head.

Only Scott Carson and his twin Alex looked back, stopping just enough behind the group to check if Jake was okay before hustling back into the throng.

News of the fight would spread through the school like the flu through a daycare center. The story would go like this:

Mr. Goff had pulled the cool “spit-the-hat-and-make-him-wear-it” move, but Jake had the cajõnes to take the first punch. Once the dust sifted back down, the edge would go to Jack Goff because it was the more believable story. David Polks would stop his incessant pestering and belittling of Jake shortly after the incident. Jake thought it was because David now had a newfound respect for him. Alex and Scott Carson would say it was because he didn’t want Jake to kick his scrawny ass.

“Are you okay?”

Jake turned to face Ms. Grey who was standing with one foot on the porch and one foot on the top step, ready to run to Jake if he passed out.

Jake’s eyes burned. His breathing caught in his throat. He bark-sobbed at Ms. Grey.

“Why’d you have to call me poor?”

Jake turned and slowly walked home to where his Mother would stuff him with Dolly Madison snack cakes -- they couldn’t afford Hostess yet they could still afford these waxy and grainy substitutes -- and slightly-turned orange juice from concentrate to assuage his raging self-loathing. She would wipe his face with a cool, wet, sour-smelling washcloth and wrap ice in the washcloth to put on the lump that would form on his crown. She would then retire back to the bedroom to finish the latest romance novel by Violet Whinspear or Janet Dailey and “put her feet up”.

Jake would sit alone in the cool of the afternoon kitchen holding his throbbing head and cursing the short straw life had drawn for him.