THE CELEBRATION!

     So I ACED that interview - and I am PSYCHED! I will now be working at The Fox Hole in two days!

As I make my way downstairs to the bathroom, I can feel that pressure in my shoulders and neck that I needed to put on my best hard guy act. Now I want to let it out. The rush makes me feel like a ball in a pinball machine. I want to ricochet off the walls too. I want to light up the fuckin’ room. Ding! Ding! Ding! Free game!

When I get to the bathroom, I look under the stalls, to make sure nobody’s in there.

“Yeah! Holy shit! Yeah! Motherfucker! Motherfucker! You did it! Son of a bitch!” I get down on that cold white tile floor, and run off thirty push-ups, just like that. I get up all flushed and red, and the memories, the trapped, constricted feeling of oppression flush over me. Of not having any money to do anything, having to listen to my father’s badgering, and Jack the Barber’s nonsense. Everybody trying to impose their shit on me- it all comes flooding back, as I look at myself in the full-length mirror. Spontaneously, almost unconsciously, I morph into my boxing stance, and start shuffling.

“Overhand left-ooh- jab, jab, jab with the right- to the body- to the body-

You can’t hurt me- you can’t hurt me- straight left to the head- again- again- oh- he scores heavy! Ok, shuffle! Dance-dance-that’s right- float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Right uppercut- left hook to the jaw- ugh- ugh- ugh! Vicious combination to the body! Oooh- he’s hurt, he’s hurt, he staggering- he’s going down! 10-9-8-7-6- he’s out- KO! Ho! Ho!”

I fall to my knees, my arms raised in victory. The Champion! Yes! I blow kisses to the crowd. The roar is deafening, as they chant my name. I pull out my pick from my back pocket, and it instantly becomes a microphone. Now, I am being interviewed by Howard Cosell.

“When did you know you had him, Champ?” I ask in my best Howard Cosell style impersonation.

“I knew - I knew - I had him in the tenth, Howard (I gasp between panting breaths, exhausted from the vicious bout) he had nothing left, he…”

All of a sudden Salvatore, one of the other brothers, walks through the door, looking at me like I’m a fuckin’ lunatic.

“Um… hey, Salvatore! What’s up? Just-just- combing my hair.”

I put the pick back in my pocket, and rush out of there, the glory of victory temporarily aborted.

When I walk outside, I’m strutting now, strutting like Rooster, the pimp from (the TV show) Baretta. This neighborhood, which only forty-five minutes before, had seemed so fucking foreboding, now I actually find it quite charming, almost quaint.

I breathe in the greasy air from the various Kentucky Fried Chicken and White Castles, intermingling with the fumes spewing from the Romerowski Brothers factory smoke stacks. Breathe it in deep, and now it’s kind of pleasant. Even refreshing. I just break out loud into Summer Wind, snapping my fingers, as I bop through the streets.

I pass by the three old black guys sitting on milk crates in front of Willie’s Barbershop, still in the exact same position as before, arguing loudly about which one of them had had sex with Josephine Baker in France, during WWII. All of a sudden, they stop in mid-sentence, when they see me coming by.

“What? What that crazy-ass fool be singin'?”

Sound like that got-damn Frank Sinatra shit! You know he jacked that shit from Duke!”

As I pass by them I smile, tip an imaginary cap, and say, “Top a’ the mornin’ to ya,” in my best Irish brogue.

They all look at each other, eyes wide open and pissed off.

“Hey! Hey! You- you- wanna get somebody kilt wit' that shit! Half-stepping fool!”

“Wiggling’ an’ jiggling like he done lost his got-damn mind!”

But nothing could faze me now. It’s like I’m walking through Disneyland.

THE INTERVIEW

So there Joey is - in the middle of an extremely foreboding interview in the darkened Fox Hole - sitting right across the table from Big Tommy, the owner, while he finishes up his veal parmegana and Campari and soda.

“You like Frank Sinatra?”

“Um-yeah - yeah (I vigorously nod), my father listens to him all the time. He’s got every one of his albums.”

“What’s ya favorite song?”

I frantically search my memory. I mean, I didn’t really listen to Frank Sinatra! I’ve heard it all my life- but it isn’t my music. Finally, I blurt out - Summer Wind! 

I hope I made the right choice. He finally looks up at me, and for a long time.

“Summer Wind, huh? Awright, sing the first couple of lines fuh me.”

I look at him for a minute- and then smile. He’s joking, right? I mean, he can’t be serious. Finally, Tommy Boy nudges me with his elbow.

“Sing.” He threatens.

I go back in my memory. I’d heard that song probably, like, 1000 times, but I can’t remember any of it now. Finally, I know I just got to wing it.

“The Summer Wind came blowing in

 From across the sea

It lingered there to touch your hair

      And come walk with me

  (I look at him to see if that’s good enough, but he waves at me to keep going.)

All summer long, we sang a song,

And then strode that golden sand

(Now, I’m getting into it. I start snapping my fingers)

Two sweethearts and the summer wind

Like painted kites, those days and nights

 Went flying by-

The world was new underneath the blue umbrella sky –“

“Awright! You come in tomorrow, after school. You get paid cash every week. Tommy Boy’ll show you around. I got only two rules- show up on time - and don’t steal from me. You steal from me - I’ll cut yuh fuckin’ balls off, and eat ‘em fuh dinner.”

“Capece?"

“Yeah,” echoed Tommy Boy.

When Tommy Boy and his brothers finally finish showing me around the kitchen, I ask him if I can use the bathroom.

“It’s downstairs,” he mumbles, in between long drags of his Marlboro. Then he looks at me with this weird look. I knew there was something crazy about his eyes, and now I realize what it is. They look like a dog’s eyes! They’re ice blue, like an Alaskan Huskies, and he has olive skin. It’s bizarre. It’s the kind of look, like, when a dog eyes you quizzically, but if you go near him, you don’t know if he’s going to bite your face off - or lick you.

“Hey, don’t be late tomorrow,” he grunts threateningly.

THE FAMILY

Even though I’m scared shit, I somehow know that I am on the precipous of a brave new world, and although I am somewhat dismayed at the rather ordinary appearance of The Fox Hole, I know it is gravely important for me to follow through!

 I open the door, and walk into a dark hall with a maroon velvet carpet. And all these pictures of a guy in a sergeant’s uniform, standing with Dwight D. Eisenhower, or General Patton, or whoever it was. Being presented with these medals. To the left of the pictures, is a big plaque that reads – America, Love It or Leave It.

 It’s dark and there’s nobody around, so I yell out hello a couple of times, but no one answers. I wait a couple of minutes and knock on the door… once… twice…still nothing. I feel the anger and frustration building up in me. I’m just about to turn around and leave, when this rough-looking character answers the door.

He’s got a deep scar running down his nose to the middle of his cheek, like somebody had once torn his nose off, or something. Even more startling, he has a huge butcher knife in his hand, and his white kitchen shirt is splattered with fresh blood. Yet, his thick black hair…that’s perfectly coiffed, in a pompadour-type style. He appears to be in his mid-twenties. I immediately jump back.

“Yeah? Whaddya want?” He demands in a thick Newark-Italian accent.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” I throw out my chest, and try to make my own Brooklyn accent as pronounced as possible. I put out my hand to shake, but he just looks me over disdainfully, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Whatddya want?”

 “I- um- yeah- I’m looking for a job.”

“Yeah? Who sent you? Louie?”

“No- nobody- I just came over myself.”

“Yeah? (looking me over) What kind of work you lookin’ fuh? We don’t need no waituhs.”

“No- no- no- I’m looking for- you know- maybe- dishwasher?”

“Dishwashuh, huh? You got any experience?”

“Um- well- I- uh wash dishes at my house a lot.”

“Hey, don’t be a freakin’ wise-ass, OK? (He lights up his cigarette) I’m gonna see if my father’s around. Stay right here. Don’t move.”

With that, he slams the door. I wait for about five minutes, debating whether to escape with my life right now, when he reappears.

“Awright- c'mon- follow me.”

I gasp as we enter the restaurant. It is a shrine to Frank Sinatra. There are literally hundreds of pictures of him! And they are all autographed with inscriptions like-

“To Tommy - knock ‘em dead." Frankie   

And his song, My Way, is playing on the juke box.

As I gawk at all the pictures, Guido leads me to a booth. Sitting there - is maybe the scariest older guy I have ever seen. He has a gigantic upper body. Huge shoulders, big neck and head, but a really skinny bottom part, with baggy pants. He sits there eating a meal of veal Parmesan and Italian bread, drinking a Campari and soda. He doesn’t say a single word, and doesn’t look at me. It’s dark.

“Don’t say nuthin’ ‘til he talks to ya,” says Guido.

I nod. 

After he finishes another forkful of veal Parmesan – he grunts in a deep, rocky voice.

“Siddown.”

I sit immediately.

“What’s yuh name?” He still doesn’t look at me.

“Joey- Joe.”

“Joey what?”

“Joey Montaperto-“

“Montaperto- (he uses the Italian pronunciation) good… I thought you was a spic for a minute. You wanna job?

“Yeah, I- “

“Tommy Boy! (He yells), we need another dishwashuh?”

Tommy Boy comes back to the booth.

“Yeah, Pop, yeah. That other douche-bag walked out on us yesterday. I almost fuckin' broke his neck.”

Long silence.

THE JOB SEARCH COMES TO AN END!

         The Fox Hole. Even the sound of it is intriguing. Scary. All the rest of the night I mull over the possibilities of maybe going there to look for a job. This place was a kind of a legend in Roselle, like The Jersey Devil. You’d hear all kinds of spooky stories about it over the years.

Supposedly, the guy that owned it was some kind of big Mafia don, sort of a belligerent madman, who'd actually crushed people’s skulls with his bare hands. Some of whom had even worked for him. His whole family ran the place, and they were allegedly just like him. They lived in Newark, in a section called the North Ward, which was infamous for gangland shootings and rubouts. Apparently, during the riots in the late 60s in downtown Newark, him and a bunch of other Mob type guys blockaded off The Ward from the rampaging black onslaught with their Cadillacs, and rifles, and just started dropping the rioters right there. No questions asked.

 The Fox Hole is another place that none of the kids I know have ever ventured. And with good reason. It’s all the way over by the border of Linden, the next town over, in a creepy, forbidden industrial zone, that’s mostly deserted after five o'clock.

     The next morning, I make up my mind that I’m going to set out for The Fox Hole after school. I have a vague sense of its whereabouts and check the Yellow Pages for the exact address. When three o’clock rolls around, I don’t want to be around anyone - I need to go into myself, be totally alone, like I did when I first took that bus ride to the PAL in Elizabeth. I walk down Chestnut Street to Young’s Chinese Kitchen, by myself an egg roll, and lock myself in the bathroom. Concentration. I gotta summon the guts to overcome the jitters. I need silence.

After five minutes, Mrs. Young starts banging on the door.

“Hello! Hello! Why you stay in bathroom so long? You no make dirty in there! You no throw up, ok? Hello! Hello!”

I soon realize there will be no refuge in this bathroom. I finish my egg roll, wipe the grease off my lips with the toilet paper, and move out. I’m ready to begin my latest odyssey. With great determination, I march down Chestnut Street, make a right onto Fifth Avenue, past the familiar sights of St. Joseph’s Church, and the Knights of Columbus building, and up four more blocks till I reach Poplar Street. Re-energizing my focus, I head the three blocks towards the boundary of boundaries, St. Georges Avenue. The dividing line between Roselle and Linden. Almost immediately you can sense a distinct change in landscape, in feeling. Foreboding and grey. The goosebumps rise on my arms, and that energizing rush starts to kick in again. I’m really starting to dig that sensation now, in a weird sort of way. Soon, I come upon the Romerowski Brothers factory, where about six or seven years ago they had had this horrifying fire, and the workers there, mostly immigrants, were jumping out the window because there were no fire exits. Until like twenty-one of them had perished. But here it is, still going. A gloomy testament to desperation - and they still probably have no fire exits. A group of frumpy looking women in kerchiefs, are gathered around a silver lunch truck parked outside the windowless factory, conversing loudly in Polish or Russian, or whatever. Eating these greasy kielbasa sausages. It’s weird for me to actually see a place, of which I had only read about in the newspaper.

After that, it’s just block after nasty block of check-cashing places, boarded up warehouses, bail-bond storefronts, White Castles, and more fast-food chicken restaurants than I had ever seen in my life. Either a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a Popeye’s on every block. You could literally smell the accumulated grease for blocks.

At one point, I think I’ve been propelled into a parallel universe. Because on one block, there appears a Harrison’s World of Liquors, Willie’s Barbershop, and Thompson Hardware, all lined up in the exact same sequence as their counterparts - Coogan’s Liquor’s, Jack’s Barbershop, and Gustav’s Hardware, on Amsterdam Avenue! What an eerie replica. In front of Willie’s, sit three old black guys with those old time racing track kind of hats, perched on milk crates, slurping down pint cans of Olde English 800, debating each other animatedly in gravely, raspy voices. As I pass by, the conversation abruptly stops, and they all stare at me.

“Hmm… you know that - that mo’fucker don’t be livin’ round here - hmm.”

They all break up hysterically, then go back to their debate. What is it about barbershops and me?

 I square my shoulders, pretending I don’t hear them, and stride onwards. A couple blocks more and it becomes slightly more residential, a couple of rather ramshackle houses scattered here and there. Finally - there it is. The fabled Fox Hole. Actually, it’s nothing like I imagine it would be, not at all grandiose. In fact, it’s kind of ordinary looking.

The one singular thing that really distinguishes it, are the three flags flying in front of it. An American flag, an Italian flag, and a black MIA flag. And a statue of the Virgin Mary, enclosed in a glass case. I find it amazing that nobody in this area had broken it a long time ago. Well, I’m here. Forty-five minutes into the unknown I have journeyed. I made it.So, there I was - I had just walked out on Jack the Barber’s insidious offer of a job - there was nowhere else to turn! Nowhere else, that is, except for the MOST forbidden place in ‘The Forbidden Zone’ - the FOX HOLE