MY HAIRY ASS
Look. I’ll say it. Dudes look real ugly when they fight. I’m not even talking from some judgment place here, their faces just look mad unattractive when they’re really in it. It’s not like the movies, no one comes out looking like a cool action star when they’re throwing or getting thrown. God’s honest, it looks like they’re trying to take a shit. No other way around it. Most guys look like they’re white knuckling their way through a real bowl buster.
All this to say, Bash Villeda looked real ugly today.
I was watching the guy land the third in a three-punch combo on a Cinnaminson track captain and it truly looked like he was about to drop a load right there in the parking lot. His technique was A1, no surprise for Moorestown Athletics’ golden child, but his face was all “Oh, God, this one might split me in half.” The clenched anger. A shameful determination. An ugly need to win. Such a different face from that one I was just waving to minutes ago. That mopey guy sitting alone by the dumpster ignoring my ass looked way different. That was a guy I could maybe feel sorry for. That wasn’t Bash the Flash.
And wouldn’t you know it, the second I considered tagging in and paying it forward, the Flash took a sucker punch to the chops and dropped to the ground. Like a sack of potatoes. You hate to see it.
I just sighed.
“...Anywho.”
I kicked up my crutches and moseyed on along the blacktop, limping away from the sounds of fists on ribs and dicks on display. It’s not that I couldn’t help my Moorestown brothers defend our track-and-field team’s honor. I’m bigger than anyone in that dogpile, Cinnaminson or otherwise, and I know my way around a punch. But I had places to be and a cast on my leg and, most importantly, I did not want to. There’s no chance in God’s green hell that either of those track a-holes would join a fight for my sake, so why should I return the favor? I mean, I’m not a petty person but maybe when a guy waves to you, maybe if you do the courteous thing and wave back, maybe then you can expect some backup in your little brodown throwdown, but for now? On this particular summer day? This field captain’s got better places to be.
Namely: Dr. Harriet Kizer and her humble medical practice. The Miceli family has been trusting Dr. K since before I was born and, truly, I could not tell you why. There’s nothing particularly charming about the good doctor, her office smells as old as it looks, and the strip mall by the highway’s got to be the least convenient location in town. All this to say, the doc’s not my favorite hangout spot. Usually.
Today, though, I was actually rootin’ and tootin’ to schlep all the way across town. I didn’t mind braving the sun and the elements and the swamp-ass this particularly sweltering day. Because today was August 17 and, according to the calendar I’d been obsessively tracking all summer, August 17 was Cast Day. That’s right. After an endless summer of sweating and itching and schlepping, this big green asshole on my foot was finally coming off.
Good fucking riddance.
Once the rotating blade settled and the cast was off, I couldn’t stop staring at my newly bare foot in the mirror. My legs were dangling off the exam table, just touching the floor, and I could see that this new tan line was going to be a problem. My healthy foot was proper tan. A summer of sun on the Atlantic City boardwalk got it nice and toasted and my leg hair looked dark and lush. The other foot, however, looked like a newborn bird. Darth Vader under his helmet. A testicle. All pink and shriveled.
Hm. A problem, indeed.
I diverted my mind away from my testicular foot and turned my attention to the waxy paper they always have on those exam tables. Like wrapping paper for your ass. I wiggled around a little, enjoying the crunch.
“Hey, where do you buy this?”
I looked up to confirm that the doctor who’s known me since I was a newborn was, in fact, ignoring me. That’s fine. I’m used to it. My brain quickly shifted gears.
“Oh! Hey, Dr. K? So, I was reading online that there’s this pill or something, like a vitamin or whatever, that can slow hair growth. You know anything ’bout that? Or something like that?”
“Oh, I bet.”
I couldn’t tell if she was listening but I didn’t know who else to ask about this. Worth a shot, right?
“Yeah, ’cause, like, I like the scruff and no one else in my grade can really grow much of anything. Like, my brothers couldn’t at my age. But... I don’t know. It’s just...it’s a lot sometimes?”
“Mm. I’d imagine.”
“So maybe if there’s something I could take or, like, something I could do to make it stop growing so much? Not stop growing altogether but...you know, maybe just let me catch up a bit?”
“Oh, I hear ya.”
My newly hatched foot twitched.
Do you? Do you hear me?
I could’ve self-immolated and received the same responses. It’s my own fault for bothering to ask. Bothering to engage. Bothering. That’s what happens when you stick your neck out. Someone’s always there to trip over it. My eyes made their way back to the mirror. My hairy feet. My hairy legs. My hairy neck.
I sighed. “Hairy, hairy boy.”
So, I know what you’re thinking and, no, I don’t have much hair on my ass. Like, honestly, it’s nearly hairless. Next to hairless. There’s an understandable, lightly colored fuzz but it’s nothing like my face, chest, pits, or legs. I feel the need to clarify this because, looking at me, one would assume it’s a full forest down there. But it’s truly not. I promise. I just get insecure sometimes ’cause, like, I get it. I am a hairy person. If you were to break me down into adjectives, hairy would make the top ten. Top five, I’ll be fair.
The topic of hair has really been weighing on me lately for a few reasons. Two, to be specific. The first being that Jersey’s currently on fire. This heat wave compounded with the nifty inconvenience of the cast on my leg means that I’ve been 98 percent sweat all June, July, and Augie Doggie. I haven’t gone twenty-four hours without a midday shower and tank-top swap and my hair is only making things worse. It’s dark and traps heat and most days I consider shaving myself clean if I weren’t so terrified it’d all grow back thicker and in greater numbers.
The second reason for my hair fixation is my shoulders. For context, I’ve got great shoulders. Everyone says so. I don’t know the difference between great shoulders and average or subpar shoulders, but apparently I’ve been blessed with a certain broadness that according to my father, brothers, and doctor would be “great for football” and “wasted on your dumb ass.” I don’t take pride in much but, hey, I got good shoulders. They make me an excellent shot-putter and I can fill out a sport coat nicely. All this to say, my beautiful, perfect, God-given shoulders are under siege.
I get having a hairy face. It’s actually nice ’cause no one else in my grade can grow much at all. The chest is kind of cool too. And I understood when I got pit hair. That’s life. And I knew to expect all the forestation on my crotch. I even got over my hairy feet. Qué será, Quesarito. But I am now getting hair all over my fucking shoulders and, I tell you, the line has been crossed. Because if I’m not in school, church, or Antarctica, I’m wearing a tank top. They’re my default. My comfort zone. I keep my pits trimmed and apply the appropriate amount of sunblock. But how in the living fuck do I adapt to hairy shoulders? Now even my favorite tanks just expose me further to the world as Sandro Miceli: Italian Yeti. I was plucking the shoulder hairs at first but this doesn’t seem like a problem that’s pluckable. I had a dream I hit big money on Jeopardy and spent my winnings on laser hair removal but I can’t bank on that happening. So, it’s been tough.
“Mr. Miceli?”
“Hm?”
Dr. Kizer poked her head back into the exam room.
“Can you stay one more minute?”
I had errands to run and crutches to burn but one more minute couldn’t hurt.
“Sure thing, Doc.”
She gave me the same kind of frantic thumbs-up/run away combo Ma gives me on her busier days. Maybe Dr. K’s schedule’s as packed as my mother’s. See, Ma loads her days from sunup to sundown. Her life is a series of thirty-minute increments and checks off a list. The woman’s unofficial mascot is the Energizer Bunny and it’s hard to get her to sit down for long before she’s off to the new problem. Honestly, I was baffled that she had the mental real estate to remember today was Cast Day. At breakfast, I was making my nieces and nephew eggs, trying to hear the weather report over my family’s morning screaming, when Ma pointed at the kitchen calendar and hollered over to me.
“Oho! You excited to return that slipper?”
I laughed her off. It was an obvious question with an obvious answer but that’s not why I laughed. See, I have this secret competition going between my mother and father and, with that simple query, Claudia Miceli ended her champion streak for the longest amount of time not speaking to me directly. My dad broke his five-day streak two nights ago when he told me to “get the fuck out” of the TV room so he could watch Bones. But with the slipper remark, Ma now holds the belt with a record-breaking twelve days of not speaking to me.
My keeping track isn’t some self-pitying thing. It’s really not. I completely understand why my parents don’t talk to me much. Between their four jobs, my two asshole deadbeat brothers, two nieces, one nephew, and our one shared bathroom, I have a lot of family going on. The Micelis are a screaming match in a crowded restaurant personified and the best thing I can do to help them is take no part. I handle my own shit, avoid my dad and brothers, and help Ma where I can. And to her credit, I think she’d talk to me if I had something to say. She’s just busy. I get it. But for now, she holds the crown. That cast question was the first time she’d spoken to me in over a week. I’d say it was our first conversation in over a week, but she didn’t stick around for my answer.
If she had stuck around, I would’ve told her, “No, I love my cast. It’s been pressure-cooking my foot all summer and I’m not ready to say goodbye.” And she would’ve slapped the back of my head for being a smart-ass and reminded me that it was “your own damn fault you’ve got the damn thing.” Which is true. I fell off my roof. Whoops. And, honestly, I’m impressed I didn’t break more. I think I deserve a little credit for only shattering my foot and ankle ’cause it’s a drop.
The few days following the accident might’ve been the first time my family’s focus was on me since birth. Especially Ma. Her poor Sandro, the baby of her boys, fell off the roof trying to fix the satellite dish. All so her NCIS marathon would DVR correctly. A true martyr. What Ma doesn’t know is that I was actually sleeping up there.
My room’s in the attic. It’s not as dreary as it sounds. It’s insulated and shit and I can get onto the roof through the window. Whenever my brothers piss me off or my parents are fighting too loud beneath me, I’ll go on the roof and cool off. Sometimes I play guitar, sometimes I chat with myself. It’s nice. And it’s mine.
One particular May night, when my baby niece was screaming with an ear infection, I found myself on the roof. I was strumming my guitar up at the stars, trying to sort out which ones might be planes, when I started thinking about Jackson Pasternak. We’d just had an all-grade assembly that day because someone keyed the word FAG into Jackson’s locker. It was fucked and no one was copping to it. I don’t think our class president’s gay but he doesn’t deserve that shit. I don’t mean he’d deserve it if he were gay, I mean (a) I don’t think he’s gay and (b) no one deserves that shit.
Anyway, this kid behind me was whispering to his buddy the whole assembly. Halfway through I gave him a look and, surprise, surprise, it was captain of the track team and loser of today’s fistfight, Mateo Silva. Matty, to someone who gives a shit. A real fucking asshole. One of the shortest guys in our grade with the biggest ego. He was giggling and whispering and I know he fucking did it. He saw me looking back at him and just gave me this bullshit kissy face. That night, up on my roof with my guitar, I went on this long train of thought where I’d confronted the dickhead after track practice. Gotten him away from Bash the Flash and his corral of sprinters and just let that fucker have it. But then the cops got involved and I had to go to court and it was a whole legal mess because I did it on school grounds and it turned into this big media circus and next thing I knew I was waking up on the ground.
My brain would only focus on my guitar at first. What was left of it, at least. My thrice-hand-me-down baby was busted to toothpicks and I almost started to cry. Then I started to suspect I might’ve broken my ass ’cause it was sore as hell. Weirdly, I could only feel my ass-soreness for those first few minutes which really freaked me out because there were legit bones sticking out of my foot. It was bad. But I just sat there. Surrounded by guitar parts, almost crying, my bones in the breeze. For like thirty minutes, I’d wager. I just couldn’t bear to get up. Because if there was anything worse than breaking my foot open, it would’ve been my family’s reaction. They’d pile on me like they always do.
“Jesus Christ, Sandro.”
“Of course, you fell off the roof.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Sandro?”
“Classic Sandro.”
Classic dumb, hairy Sandro. So, I sat on the ground a little longer and thought of what my lie might be.
If you’re getting the impression that my family doesn’t think much of me, I hope you’ll understand why I’ve taken a few steps back from them. It’s not that they ignore me or dislike me. It all comes from a place of love. Which, to me, makes it worse. That this is what love means to Micelis. But who doesn’t have family shit? I’m not special. I’m just working with what I got. So what if my parents can go days without talking to me? So what if Ma stopped thinking about my broken foot once Raph’s girlfriend got pregnant again? So what if I had to limp myself across town all summer because nobody had time to drive me anywhere? So what?
I just need to get through the next year and then I’m out of here. I can go to college and just start my life somewhere far away. Where my teachers don’t automatically hate me because my older brothers gave them shit. Where I can wear a nice sweater without my dad calling me a “preppy queer.” Where I can date someone. Anyone. Where I can be Sandro, not a fucking Miceli.
“Mr. Miceli?”
I snapped out of my spiraling and turned away from the mirror.
“Wassup, Doc Ock—”
I went still. “No.”
“Yes.”
“C’mon.”
Dr. Kizer smiled up at me from the doorway.
“I’m sorry, hon. But X-rays don’t lie.”
The tiny woman was holding what had to be the biggest boot brace known to man, woman, or Sasquatch.
“Tell you the truth, I’m surprised we had one in your size.”
“Dr. Kizer.”
“I told you, Sandro, if you insisted on walking everywhere, your foot wouldn’t set correctly.”
Insisted. It felt like she’d reached into my rib cage and finger-fucked my heart. I crumpled back onto the wall.
“But...it’s been all summer, Doc.”
“And you just need a little more time to cook!”
Dr. Kizer leaned against the exam table. I think it was an attempt to “level” with me but it only made her look all the more pint-size by comparison.
“But I won’t need the crutches anymore, right? Those are done? Right?”
Dr. Kizer gave me the same clinically apologetic smile she’d been giving me all summer. A trick she must’ve learned in medical school.
“Well...walking cast is a bit of a misnomer. Crutches are still recommended.”
“Recommended?”
“We don’t wanna see you limping back in here come Christmas.”
For a second, I thought I could cry. But I got the tears to wait. Dr. Kizer patted my knee.
“I’m sorry, dear. I know you must be disappointed. Do you have a ride home?”
I just stared at my pruney foot in the mirror, letting her question linger. I really didn’t appreciate when adults asked things they knew the answers to.
When I hobbled on my crutches back into the summer heat, I just about screamed. Half from the scorch, half because are you fucking kidding me? I kicked the air with my useless, broken, booted foot.
“FUCK.”
It echoed across the empty parking lot. I took a moment to let the noise fade away.
Sorry. I’m just kind of pent-up lately. This boot news is just another tick in the increasingly shitty tally of my life. ’Cause, to answer Ma’s question for real, yeah. I was really pumped to get the “slipper” off. It was just this bright green reminder that I’m a fucking idiot who fell off his roof. I thought I was done explaining what happened to people, done begging Raph to “chauffeur” me around. But nope. Because of all the walking I “chose” to do, my bones didn’t set right. Super. Super fucking duper.
I limped across the parking lot and looked over to the chain-link. No one was behind the Rte. 130 Diner. No sign of a fight, save for some plastic bits from a broken milk crate. It was like nothing ever happened. It’s funny how violence can pass through like that. How all that anger can come and go. Funny to see what it leaves behind.
For a moment, I thought about Bash the Flash. Well. Actually, I thought about Bash Villeda. The guy I saw sitting on that milk crate. That heavy look on his face. Before the fight. Before he was throwing punches and saying all the right tough things. And I tried to remember why I ever thought it would be a good idea to wave to him. Of course he was gonna ignore me. Guys like him only notice guys like me when we’re bringing home field medals and even that doesn’t save us from the jokes. All those nicknames, all in good fun. The Incredible Bulk. Queen Kong. The Italian Yeti.
And now I probably can’t even compete with my fucked-up bones. What’s a teammate with a boot on his leg? What am I worth to guys like them?
I noticed a broken plate on the pavement, right around where Bash was sitting. Shards of plate and the bloody remains of some burnt-looking eggs. And I wondered if he ever got to finish his lunch. And I wondered why I might wonder something like that.
“...Anywho.”
I got my crutches positioned under my pits and mentally prepped myself for the journey home. Two more miles of slogging. Three more weeks of summer. Four more months with a walking cast. And crutches. And begging. And hoping. Hoping that my bones set right this time. Hoping no one asks how I broke them. Hoping I can just get through senior year without incident.
But I’m optimistic. ’Cause if anyone can sneak his way to graduation without being noticed it’s my hairy ass.