LOOK AT THE BALLS ON DRO
When I got into Bash Villeda’s truck, all I could think about were my balls. I love my Italy shorts dearly but, in the two years since I bought them on the Atlantic City boardwalk, both my legs and balls have grown. Before I left, my little nephew GJ told me I was one high kick away from showing the world my goods and I didn’t heed his warning. But sitting shotgun in that pickup, the shitty polyester of those ten-dollar shorts riding up the upholstery, I feared my junk was a ticking time bomb.
“Windows down?”
Bash’s question shook me out of my ball-fog and I nodded.
“Oh. Uh...sure.”
He rolled the windows down and we both went back to staring silently ahead.
I wasn’t surprised when I got the invite to the Beer Olympics. I wasn’t stoked that Matty Silva was the one extending the last-minute offer but I’ve grown to expect the random invite here and there. See, people love to invite me to shit. Seriously. I’m constantly getting invited to parties I have no business attending. I nearly got shin splints last year after all the sweet sixteens I stomped my way through.
Someone once told me that I’m a “party essential.” At first, I thought it was high praise. That people really enjoyed my presence. Then Syd DeStefano had this rager to celebrate getting over mono and it was the talk of homeroom come Monday. People were chatting me up, saying how wild it was and how fucked-up we all got and I just laughed and nodded along, apparently the only one who knew I was not in attendance. I’d bailed last minute due to some gas station hot dog–related food poisoning, yet Syd still thanked me for making an appearance.
It was then I realized that people liked inviting me to things but didn’t really give a shit if I went. I guess because I’m quasi-friendly with everyone and because I’m loud and overall a fun guy, people considered me “essential.” Like a queso fountain. Or a bouncy house. A fun thing to have but not necessarily make-or-break for your night’s overall success.
That cooled me off parties this summer. I only agreed to go to the Olympics for field solidarity. Dr. Kizer’s new foot prison was almost enough to keep me inside for the night, but something bigger made me follow through. Fieldies had been openly excluded from some track parties in the past, and I figured accepting a Silva olive branch was the captainly thing to do. Or maybe I just wanted to show off my favorite shorts. Maybe I’d spent enough time wallowing in my room for one summer. Or maybe I just didn’t want to let the fucking boot win.
“Can you put your seat belt on?”
“What?”
I snapped back out of my stare. Bash nodded at my waist. “Your belt. People get pulled over here. And...the beer.”
“Oh. Right. Click it or ticket.”
“Mm.”
I adjusted my sitting carefully, very mindful of my shorts, and clicked it. I waited a responsible amount of time to see if the guy’s sentence fragments were going to progress into any form of polite conversation but, ten mailboxes later, decided it was a lost cause. So be it. I despise awkward silences to my core but they beat walking any further in that heat.
For the umpteenth time, my brother Raph was nowhere to be found when it came time to drive me to the party. It wasn’t some great shock but, more than a ride, I guess I just wanted my family to know I had plans for the night. That I was leaving for the night to get wasted in the woods and wouldn’t be doing my chores in the morning. That I might even throw up if I felt like it. That, if offered, I’d smoke weed. That, if offered, I’d have anonymous sex on the Rotary Club Nature Trail. I would’ve loved to tell my parents that their youngest son, Sandro, was going out for the night and he was ready to burn this town to the motherfucking ground.
But they were both at work so I just left a Post-it on the microwave. Out late. I guess I’m glad Raph didn’t drive me. If he had, I never would’ve discovered how shit Bash Villeda was at small talk.
Moorestown’s premiere track captain is a well-known, well-liked luminary in our small town. He’s our school’s current athletic prodigy and I’m told he has a lot of top-tier scouting interest. He is biracial, has a strong jawline, and (usually) has good hair. And that’s about all I know about him. If I had to guess, I met him in elementary school and in that time we’ve carried less than five conversations. It’s not that I don’t like the guy. I just don’t know him. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I know Bash the Flash. Everyone does.
Bash the Flash is the guy who did shrooms on the away bus and got us disqualified from the Camden Kids Fun Run. Bash the Flash is who I saw give that Cinnaminson dude some serious cauliflower ear behind a diner. The Flash is best friends with Matty Silva, noted cock, and apparently tied to his hip. I know that guy well enough. But I’d never seen him alone before. Maybe that’s why I knocked on his truck window. Probably why I waved at him outside the Rte. 130 Diner too. I mean, the only reason I bothered waving was that look on his face. Same look he had sitting at that stop sign. In his truck, by the dumpster, he looked lost. Alone, the guy looked really lost.
“Love the truck.”
Bash kept his eyes on the road but grunted. I couldn’t tell if it was an acknowledging or a “Whatchu say?” kind of grunt so I turned the music down.
“I said I love your truck.”
“...I heard you.”
His eyes peeked at the volume knob. I think he was peeved that a stranger had touched his knob. I suppose it was poor passenger etiquette.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Even at the low volume, Bash never stopped nodding along to the beat.
“So. Whatchu do?” Bash glanced at my boot. I perked up. Finally. A topic.
“Oh. I broke it.”
“Yeah, no shit. How?”
“Fell off my roof.”
Bash had been bobbing his head to the music all drive but he went very still there. I didn’t get it.
“...What?”
He just shook his head.
“Nothing.”
I could see it then. In the corners of his mouth, he was trying not to laugh. I didn’t know if it was at me or with me so I didn’t push. He took a right at a stop sign and his big eyebrows bunched up.
“Didn’t you have a green one? Like a... I don’t know. A hard cast?”
I smiled. Got him.
“HA! You DID see me waving at you.”
Bash rolled his eyes and actually smiled. “I was on my break, man, I’m not tryna talk to anyone.”
“Hey, I get it. Saved me the trouble of thinking up small talk.”
“See? You’re welcome.”
I laughed and readjusted the Velcro on my boot. “I had places to be anyway. Sorry I didn’t help.”
“What?”
“Help. With the fight. Looked pretty brutal.”
Then Bash stopped smiling. The bruise on his cheek twitched. Whatever warming up he’d been doing, that was over. The flatness was back in his voice and he might as well have just grunted again.
“Not your fight.”
His eyes stayed on the road. For the best, ’cause I was rolling mine. Say one wrong thing around these guys and it’s all humphs and shoulder shrugs and bass in their voice. But I gotta say, my own hatred of dead air aside, Bash’s silence was surprising to me. Cool guys usually play the chill card till it wears out but I always thought Bash the Flash was a real loudmouth. Always talking shit on the away bus or in the locker room. But maybe that’s the Matty factor. Or, more likely, Bash wasn’t talking because he doesn’t know me or why I thought it’d be a good idea to bring up the time he got punched in the face. Could be both.
“You walk a lot.”
I nearly jumped at the sudden offer of conversation.
“I what?”
Bash stayed on the road but I could tell he wasn’t listening to the music anymore. “You were walking in that heat wave. And you were walking to the Sticks. You walk a lot.”
“Oh. Yeah. Don’t got a car.”
“Your folks let you walk around on that foot?”
Now I wanted the dead air. “Uh...sometimes. You know? Sometimes they’ll drive me though. They’re just busy. Like, they work a lot. My ma’s got, like, five jobs this summer and Pop’s in repairs so his van’s, like, never home. They’re just busy. It’s a lot to coordinate.”
Bash’s finger was tapping on his steering wheel. He looked like he was trying to do some sort of math. “So...they make you walk around on that foot.”
I could hear my crutches rattling in the bed of his pickup. I didn’t know what to say. The real answer was pretty big but I didn’t need to be emptying any purses in some track bro’s truck. That would be a very embarrassing way to start the night.
“I mean, like, they told my brother Gio to drive me but he was all I have a job, fuck off so they told my other brother, Raph, that he had to drive me because Raph doesn’t have a job right now but then, like a week in, his kinda-girlfriend Nicki—Nicki Touscani, Dani T.’s stepsister—well, Nicki got knocked up again so now Raph’s getting a job and suddenly a little broken foot didn’t look so bad to Ma and Pop. I mean, I get it. It sucks but I get it.”
Or maybe the night was always going to be embarrassing. I have a tendency to overshare when I’m nervous. But Bash just nodded along, that finger still tapping away on the steering wheel. I don’t think he knew how to act, faced with all that information.
“And...why were you on your roof?”
I felt my shoulders relax. Maybe because he didn’t tuck and roll out of his moving car. He seemed genuinely curious.
“You never go up on roofs?”
Bash shook his head. I smiled.
“I do it all the time. I mean, I did. I got a sick roof, man. Right by my room. I got a lot of family going on so I’d go up there for some quiet.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Bash took the final turn out of the Orchard.
“...Where do you go now? For quiet?”
His finger stopped tapping. I just shrugged.
“I found a spot.”
I readjusted my Italy shorts as we drove toward the forest.
At the end of the Orchard, there’s this dead end. You’re supposed to park there, or preferably a ways away and walk there, then get on the nature trail that spits you out at Square Field, this clearing in the Sticks that’s the go-to spot for outdoor parties. People in the Orchard are notorious for ratting on anyone they sense are going into the Sticks for some public revelry so I understood when Bash let out a minute-long “Fuuuuuuuck” pulling up to the dead end. At least twenty cars were clustered up at the trail’s mouth. Some blocked others in, some parked in the grass, almost all had Moorestown High School parking stickers.
I hopped out and helped Bash with his beer cases. He shook his head.
“Goddamn it, Matty. No way this doesn’t get busted.”
He seemed weirdly pressed about it too. Like he really needed the night to go well. Half to lighten the mood, half ’cause I was thirsty, I took out two Modelos from a case and gave one to him. “Might as well start now, then.”
He looked at me funny, almost like he was trying to remember who I was all of a sudden. But then he chuckled and opened his beer. They were a bit warm from the car but it didn’t stop Bash. I always thought of the track bros as lightweights, but the guy could drink. He downed his before I was halfway done, started in on another, and pointed at my shorts.
“So. Where’d you get those?”
“Atlantic City.”
The man had the gall to blow a raspberry. “AC’s busted. Wildwood’s superior.”
I just stared right back at him. He cocked his head to the side. “You disagree?”
Cocky cocking prick. I shrugged. “I’ve learned not to take Jersey beach spot preferences personally. I’ve gotten into too many fights on the topic in my short life and have developed a thicker skin.”
“Good. You’d need it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thick skin. You’d need it to survive an Atlantic City beach.”
My nose twitched. Bash smirked. It was bait. I knew it was bait. I took a long sip of beer, just to show him how chill and unbaitable I was, then launched into my defense.
“Wildwood’s boardwalk is trash, for starters, and while maybe you can argue that its beach access has an edge solely on physical location, it’s almost all metered parking, an obvious scam, and any passable restaurant is, like, ten miles away from the water. The sand is oily as hell, the roads haven’t been paved since fucking Watergate, and there’s absolutely no nightlife to speak of. ESPECIALLY compared to Atlantic City, casino capital of the East. So, yeah. Have fun spending an hour on a mildly nicer beach then spending all night in your Holiday fucking Inn.”
Bash just stared at me. I can get a little heated defending things I actually like and I thought I might’ve freaked him out. His face was kinda frozen like he was taking it all in. Then there was this crack in his eyebrows and he burst out laughing. Like a lot. And it wasn’t that booming laugh I’d hear from the back of the away bus when Bash the Flash was holding court. It was actually kind of weird. Like a coyote. The kind of animal sound you’d hear in the woods that’d make you think twice about letting your pet walk around. I got the feeling that it was his actual laugh. Pretty soon I was cracking up too.
Somewhere in the laughing, I put my crutches in his truck bed. What could one night on my boot hurt? In the bed, I noticed a bunch of first-draft poster boards of the Beer Olympics tournament bracket. I saw a Sharpie and had an idea.
“Yoooo, what team are you on?”
“What?”
Bash finished his second beer and chucked it into the bed. I popped the marker cap and tapped the big bold ITALY on my tank top.
“For Olympics. What team are you?”
“Oh. Mexico.”
“You Mexican?”
“Half.”
“Nice. Is this plain white shirt particularly precious to you?”
He laughed again and spread out his shirt. “Go for it.”
I was MEX deep when he started getting fidgety. I kinda fucked up the X but compensated. Without really thinking, I put my hand on the small of his back to steady him. It worked but Jesus he was warm. Not sweaty, per se, but it felt like he’d been sitting in the sun all day. He steadied though. As soon as I put my hand on him. Kinda like when you’re brushing a dog. They just freeze. ICO. It was Sharpie on a V-neck and I was sure his little buddy Matty would give him shit but at least he’d be regulation.
We probably hung out at the dead end longer than we should’ve ’cause by the time we were walking through the Sticks it was dark. Bash was super slow, testing every step, but I knew that trail down pat. We were carrying a case each and I was already feeling my three beers which didn’t give me too much confidence in my pong potential. Bash must’ve been feeling his too because he repeatedly remarked how quickly it got dark.
“Damn. Summer must really be over.”
I’ve learned that if a person with any level of intoxication repeats themselves once, it’s probably because they’re tipsy. If they repeated themselves any more than that, they’re really trying to say something else. So, I took him up on it.
“I love summer. Usually. But with my cast and shit, this one was kind of a bust. Past few summers have actually been busts.”
It was dark but I could see that he was nodding. He took his time to respond. “Maybe it was just part of growing up, you know? Moving on from summer.”
I couldn’t see his face and I think he preferred it that way. It was sad, what he said. At least how he said it. Like he really wasn’t ready to let go of summer that easy.
I shrugged. “Maybe we just gotta learn to love fall. Leaves and pumpkins and shit.”
He laughed. I think he appreciated that. “Yeah. Fall’s okay. I like fall.”
“Me too.”
The trail spit us out into Square Field. Square is sort of like if some rich maniac decided to build a secret soccer field in the middle of a forest but gave up after clearing trees. The ground was probably once fertile but it’s been poisoned by years of Moorestown high schoolers’ cigarette butts and vodka vomit. The Beer Olympics was already in full effect, smack-dab in the middle of the field. Tiki Torches encircled three pong games running on folding tables. There was an area for kegs and drinks, a group of smokers sitting around a bonfire, and two different speakers blaring competing house music. I’m only ever out in Square to get some alone time so the bacchanalia was surreal. What was originally just a track thing, maybe ten to twenty guys, then a track-and-field thing, at most forty, had erupted. I saw lacrosse girls, choir girls, some kids from the private school, the debate club for fuck’s sake. Had to be at least a hundred people.
“OH, WHAT THE FUCK?! VILLEDA?!”
Matty appeared in a puff of smoke. He was wearing this tacky poncho and a drawn-on mustache which seemed in poor taste. Then again, I was dressed like an offensive cartoon of an Italian so I guess we all make choices.
Matty scoffed at Bash’s newly minted shirt. “Where the fuck—What the fuck are you wearing?! You said you had a sombrero!”
I watched Bash cover for himself, that booming laugh creeping its way back out. I could barely make out his face but the change was clear. It actually made me uncomfortable. Then Matty’s drunk ass set his sights on me.
“And you. Doug’s been carrying Team Italy’s ass all night! Table three.”
This fucking guy. He pointed me to the pong tables and dragged Bash away. Before he was too far gone, Bash turned back and saluted me.
“Viva Italia!”
I saluted him back. It surprised me that he knew that. All in all, Bash Villeda was more surprising than I’d given him credit for. Interesting guy. I was impressed I had the balls to knock on his window. Any other day, I wouldn’t do something like that. Maybe I was just feeling ballsy tonight. I certainly wore the shorts for it.
I heard this voice in my head tell me that I should probably go home. I had fun, had some beers, had an acceptable amount of socialization. It was darker now but I knew the woods well and could be home in no time. I could watch a movie with GJ. Snag a nice plate of Ma’s leftover ziti before it gets inhaled. Get all warm in my cozy bed. Be comfortable. And alone.
I finished my beer and told the voice to shut up.