My Background

My publisher said it would help you understand how and why I created my beloved EARTHLINGS if I included my background. I asked if I could write a foreground but he said “NO!”. Ergo, my background.

            I was lucky to grow up in a tough area of the Bronx in the ‘50s. Not that I was lucky to grow up there, but that I actually lived to group up there.

            It seemed that gang members or simple nut jobs were always trying to kill me or my friends.

First example:  In the fifth grade at P.S. 6 on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, there was a kid, Mickey, who, I kid you knot, looked exactly like a Neanderthal; and acted like one, as well.

            One day, I’m not sure why, Mickey stabbed Charlie H. (I’ll preserve his last name anonymity).  Charlie was the son of a police sergeant and I didn’t see Mickey again till my mid-twenties when I saw him, dressed in a garage mechanics coveralls, standing on the corner of 55^th Street and Third Avenue in front of a Marine Midland bank. He looked exactly the same, only his knuckles were dragging more prodigiously.

            Anyway, I walked up to him and said:  “Hey, Mick; stab Charlie H. lately?” and quickly walked away, leaving, I’m certain, Mickey to ponder the imponderable.

            Next, in junior high, in my junior year, word got to me that Pedro The Knife was out to get me. Why, I don’t know, but when Pedro The Knife is out to get you, you’re going to get gotten.

            Pedro The Knife was the jefe of a Puerto Rican gang whose turf was around my junior high, J.H.S. 98 on Boston Road near Crotona Park. Not the most conducive location for an edifice of education.

            Anyway, Moose and Billy L (names again hidden; though Moose, a rather large and intimidating African-American who took me under his wing because I was funny and fast) told me that they cleared things with Pedro The Knife, they thought, and I should go and talk to him.

            So the next day, during lunch recess, I slowly walked towards Pedro The Knife and his gang, hanging just outside the school yard.

            “Pedro”, I said, “I heard you wanted to see me.”

            Pedro The Knife just stared at me and Emilio, his second-in-command, did likewise, as did the other gang members.

            Summing up stupid courage, I looked at Emilio and asked “If Pedro is The Knife, maybe you should be Emilio The Fork.”

            He grabbed me by the neck and screamed at me while spitting profusely in my face “What the f… you sayin’?”

            But when Pedro The Knife began laughing, Emilio caught on and let me go.

            I pressed my luck and said “Maybe Manny could be Manny The Spoon and Juan could be Juan The Ladle. Then the gang could be wonderful place seting.”

            Pedro The Knife said, “Okay, cut the crap, what do you want?”

            “I heard you were going to stab me so I brought something I thought would help.”

            “What the hell you talkin’ about?”

            It was then that I, with a flourish, unfurled a poster-size painting of a human body showing all the appropriate body parts.

            “See, Pedro, the kidneys, the liver. This can help you decide where to stab me.”

            “You crazy, man? You screwy? I don’t need no piture to show me where I going to stab you. I can stab you any place.”

            “Yeah, I know, but Moose and Billy said you weren’t going to stab me.”

            “Yeah, yeah, They talked to me, but they didn’t tell me you were nuts. So get outta here. I ain’t gonna kill you this time.”

            I thought this an excellent exit time so I thanked Pedro The Knife profusely, dropped the poster at this feet and backed away slowly, like you do with royalty.

Now while we’re still in my junior high, I’ll share my big gamble. No, not on horses or cards or real gambling, but on what my English teacher would do to me.

            She was the one, the morning after meeting my parents at a parent/teacher conference, said: “Philip, I met your parents last night. They were nice. What happened to you?”

            For our big, final ninth grade English “test” of the year, we had to read a classic novel by an English author and create something to show to the class to demonstrate best what the novel was about.

            Some of the kids made detailed dioramas, 3-D depictions of Dickensian London, etc. But when it was my turn, I walked to the front of the room, facing the class, with a big piece of white oak tag in my hand.

            My classmates, knowing me intimately, began to giggle quietly. My teacher said, already anticipating some weird action on my part, “So, Philip, what do you have for us?”

She did this with her signature one raised eyebrow.

            I slowly unfurled the oak tag, which was the size of a one-sheet movie poster and exhibited to the class (which started laughing out loud) and our teacher.

            “What is that? There’s nothing there! It’s blank!”

            “Of course it is.  I read H.G. Wells ‘The Invisible Man’.”

            She raised both eyebrows but I got an A.

            Now, in the same vein, we skip ahead to my sophomore English final in college.

We were told that our final would be an essay. I figured that would be easy since I was always doing well in English.

            We sat down knowing we’d have forty minutes to write whatever the hell our professor would proffer.  She turned her back on us, went to the blackboard and wrote one word:   WHY?   She then announced that we could begin.

            Immediately I saw some of my classmates writing furiously, others, with eyes tilted towards the ceiling, heavily pondering and one kid banging his head on the desk.

            I thought for a minute and figured, what the hell?

            I walked up to the teacher and handed in my paper as I heard stirrings from the class and comments such as:  “Whaddahell!” or “You’re shittin’ me!”

            I left the room as quickly as I could hoping, once again that my gamble would pay off.  It did. I got an A.

            I had written:  WHY NOT?

 

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