LEONARD KRIEGEL
105
open up. It was the Irish who introduced me to roller hockey. From one end to
the other, they scarred the street's asphalt. I was welcomed in the games. We
played in an atmosohere that could best be described as absolute. In Niles
Gardens , ability in sports was important ; here it was total. Not even in
schoolyard basketball games have I seen the dedication with which we skated
between manhole covers . The melancholy of late winter twilights was made
personal by the fierceness of the skating, the silent exultation with which we
witnessed realities fall into place . A goal! In the chilled air, music from
someone's radio. Sweat freezing to the skin. In baseball, sweat ran free.
" Freeze your ass , Lennie?"
, 'Yeah ." A difficult game. Hands stinging from the raw wood where the
shellack had been peeled down, eyes glued to the black taped puck being
maneuvered down your side. And then sticks crashing together , the struggle
for balance , the puck disappearing somewhere behind you as you banged into
the parked car and hurtled the curb on your skates. A game that threatened
anarchy. An Irish game , seeded by the geometry of the city .
It was not a game I really liked . But it was a way of working myself into
favor with the boys on 206th Street. I still remember those twilights,
something long and narrow and expectant in the air. In the dimming
February light, no time to worry about questions of the blood . Home from
chaida,
I would play until long after darkness set in and my mother called me
upstairs for dinner.
But if I learned to like the Irish, I could never understand them. Later, I
would glibly ascribe it to the way the church had hammered their sex into
celluloid . No juices , no pleasure. But that was too easy. Still , even at nine or
ten , the conversations about sex were dreadfully out of balance . The terror of
the actual had been stuffed in every hollow that god allowed . Frankie
Andrews , aged eleven , equating the mortal terror of masturbation with the
death of his soul. A candle snuffed out in darkness. Frankie himself seeking
the thin edge ofgrace which separated ' 'wet dreams" from the dreaded pits of
" jerking off." Christ in his infinite mercy demanded payment only for
consciousness . Consciousness alone made one a victim. Visions of hell
reverberating in every finger-fronted sentence .
" You 're crazy ," Dominic says. "You start that shit , you'll drive
everybody ·crazy ."
"No, " Frankie insists. " It's a sin against god . Don't you see?"
"My balls . You think god is watching what you do with your cock? You
think he ain't got better things to do? "
" You 'll pay . Everybody has to pay ."
