by
Peter Richmond
As with many people, my youth had its share of darkness, and the time surrounding my mother’s death when I was thirteen was the darkest. I tried to recover from this tragic event and recapture some sense of normalcy, but just as my life began to lighten, a malignant shadow suddenly darkened my path—Joey.
Now, Joey and I had known each other for over ten years. We’d begun as classmates in the first grade and continued as contemporaries well into our high school years, hanging together less and less with time’s passage. As we grew, we both realized that we weren’t cut from the same cloth. Truth be told, we weren’t even from the same loom. We rarely even saw each other in school as we moved toward adulthood. However, the relationship erupted in its own Vesuvius the summer I was seventeen.
As my girlfriend of the moment and I waited for traffic to move toward the exit of the parking lot we were stuck in, a sudden shout got our attention: “Dirty Jew!” My date, shocked, asked if I’d heard it, just as a replay instantly made the query and its answer irrelevant. I heard the repeat loud and clear. Eight guys, led by Joey, had surrounded the car and, as if to dare me to try to do something about it, had begun to violently rock the vehicle back and forth while the epithets continued in a deluge of Biblical proportions. We endured this torrent for something over an hour until the jam loosened enough to leave the parking area. All the while, I struggled to restrain myself from jumping out of the car to face down this Joey-scum, me against the mob. Common sense, and my date, reigned supreme and I avoided the confrontation—for the moment. Had I then possessed my two black belts, the outcome might have been different. But I hadn’t and so I endured in frustrated teeth-gnashing silence.
The next morning my father, noting the residue on the car from the evening’s entertainment, made a beeline for Joey’s house, ignoring my entreaties not to go. Dad had grown up a Depression-era Jew, and had played for the NFL’s Redskins, so his answer for such situations usually centered on forceful repayment—with extra for interest. He wasn’t someone you wanted to be on the wrong side of—even if your premiums were up to date. Anyway, a loud and personal discussion between the fathers was held on Joey’s front porch, my dad doing most of the talking.
Immediately afterwards, a second loud conversation could be heard issuing from the interior of the house—Joey’s father to Joey. Seems Joey’s padre, a socially prominent dentist, didn’t care for the prospect of losing any of his Jewish clientele because of his son’s unabashed anti-Semitism. God forbid the anti-Semitism itself should have upset him as much.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I am standing in the hallway outside of the ballroom at the local YMCA, in attendance at a monthly high school dance. Out of nowhere, who shows up? Joey! He spots me first and before I even see him or have a chance to assume a defensive position, his right fist is buried wrist-deep in my gut. My breath is totally knocked out of me and I’m rolling to and fro, trying to regain my breath and overcome the excruciating pain I’m suffering. As I’m doing my job as human floor mop, trying to get somewhere near normal functioning so that I can deliver a well-placed size 12 to Joey’s gonads, he keeps gut punching me, simultaneously prolonging my agony and verbally assaulting me with a variety of anti-Semitic epithets: “fucking Jew bastard,” “dirty Jew,” “dirty Kike,” and so on. Gotta point out—originality wasn’t one of Joey’s long suits. My co-religionists have heard the litany for years, and, unfortunately, continue to do so. The difference is that today we deal with it a bit more forcefully. Just ask any Israeli.
But I digress. As the Joey-assault continues, a friend of mine happens to walk into the hallway and, being Jewish, is also upset. He steps in front of Joey and tells him to cease the diatribe. What does my friend receive for his temerity? A barrage of punches. Before you can say, “Beat up the anti-Semitic prick,” the two of them are going at it like Rocky Marciano and Pick Your Victim, accompanied by Joey’s continuing barrage of bigoted slurs, now directed at my friend, who, big surprise, ain’t having any.
Finally, cooler (read adult) heads prevailed and the two of them are kicked out of the building and the dance continued.
For several years after this incident, Joey always seemed to be on the periphery of my life. My personal bête noir was always lurking in the shadows of my existence, prepared to burst upon the scene whenever his gut and depraved brain dictated.
He’d see me pedaling my bike or riding my Vespa and pull his car over WAY too close, solely to spark a confrontation. This would be followed by an exchange of words, then a flurry of fists. Based on my prior experience at the dance, I at least managed to avoid a gut-targeted sucker punch.
Some of these confrontations left me a bit bloodied; in others I did the bloodying. In the latter circumstance, the pleasure I felt was so visceral, it was almost erotic. Unfortunately, unlike most cases where a bully backs down when his victim responds in kind, Joey possessed an unrequited hard-on for me.
Eventually, high school ended for both of us: graduation for me, followed by college. For Joey: an endless series of menial jobs, due largely to his lack of a diploma. It was a classic example of life collecting some payback. Only he was too fucking stupid to realize it.
The summer after my final year in college found me holding down two jobs, one by day and one by night, to earn enough money to pay for grad school. My day job was an almost forgettable slog—phoning bad debtors to instill the fear of their financial destruction should they continue to ignore their bills.
But the evening’s slavery—THAT was the experience! It was in a nearby beach town about an hour’s drive north of Boston, in a combo amusement park/fairway—a collection of cheap games and galleries whose sole raison d’etre was to liberate the nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars from the pockets of passersby.
I was running a so-called game of chance. “So-called” because the only chance involved was based on how much you’d be likely to lose. You plunked down your quarter, spun the wheel and hoped. The prize, if by some freak of nature you actually won, was a long, stuffed, plush snake. As a way of attracting more suckers—excuse me, contestants, I’d developed my own patter. Developed and polished over a number of months, it was pretty damn good.
Waving one of the prize stuffed snakes, I’d rattle on. “Be a winner while you’re eating dinner.” “Take a break and win a snake!” ”Drop the huff and win some stuff!” Folks walked by, listened and laughed or shook their heads and walked on—like in a used car lot. Some folks like your wheels and want some; others can’t get away fast enough. But not Joey! Suddenly, he materialized out of the passing crowd. As he made a beeline for me, he reached out with both hands and grabbed me around the throat, providing his best imitation of the not- yet-famous Boston Strangler. He quickly pinned me across the chance board at the front of the game booth and the pressure he was exerting on my neck increased by the second. It was getting more and more difficult to simply breathe. As the pressure around my neck ratcheted north, I frantically thrashed around with my arms, desperately trying to locate my owner-provided self-defense weapon.
The business end of a baseball bat attached to a wrist strap, it was designed to quickly discourage any troublemaker with a solid whack to the side of the head. Possibly kill? Maybe. But he who wants to start trouble, unprovoked, gets what he asks for. With luck, even more so.
The pressure continued to intensify, despite efforts of a couple of bystanders to separate Joey’s fingers from my neck. Others had gone screaming in search of a cop, but any success they had had finding one was not yet apparent. Joey accompanied his manual digitations with an ongoing litany. “Never learn, do you, you fucking Jew bastard! When I’m done, there’ll be one less Jew for the rest of us to have to deal with.” It was rapidly becoming obvious to me that my chances of getting rescued or saving myself were coming down to somehow getting this rabid dog posing as a human off of me, and the quicker the better.
Then—I made contact! My fingers finally located the bat! Gratefully, with an almost overwhelming excitement, I curled my fingers around the handle. My grip—I didn’t want to lose what could be my only opportunity—was vise-like. Joey’s face, features locked in an intent grimace, was inches from mine. He hadn’t yet noticed my shift in upper body position as I appeared to continue to struggle against him.
Putting all of my remaining energy into one last twist of my shoulders against his pressure, I swung the bat. Ted Williams would have been proud. It traveled in a tight flat trajectory to the side of Joey’s skull. Contact! The sound was like that of a watermelon hitting the street. For a brief second his grip tightened. Then, nothing! His hands fell away from my neck. I could breathe!
Joey’s condition was even better from my point of view. He totally folded up into a heap on the walkway in front of my stand, head hanging into his lap for lack of consciousness to support it. I staggered back from the counter, inhaling huge gulps of air. I moved forward and stood over the prostrate form of my assailant.
“Still feel like choking me, you bastard?” I spit out. No reply. ”Nothing to say?” Nothing indeed. The son of a bitch was out cold. About then the gendarmerie showed up, took statements from me and the witnesses, and then, after consideration, placed a set of matching bracelets around Joey’s wrists. He stirred a bit and, after receiving his Miranda rights, was hauled away.
Me? Fortunately, the cops said I was totally in the right—pure self-defense. So no worries of having to deal with the police or an excited prosecutor. My latest adventure with Joey was finished. The enmity continued over the years until Joey ultimately arrived at his final destination—the hottest part of Hell. May he rest there forever.
Now, Joey and I had known each other for over ten years. We’d begun as classmates in the first grade and continued as contemporaries well into our high school years, hanging together less and less with time’s passage. As we grew, we both realized that we weren’t cut from the same cloth. Truth be told, we weren’t even from the same loom. We rarely even saw each other in school as we moved toward adulthood. However, the relationship erupted in its own Vesuvius the summer I was seventeen.
As my girlfriend of the moment and I waited for traffic to move toward the exit of the parking lot we were stuck in, a sudden shout got our attention: “Dirty Jew!” My date, shocked, asked if I’d heard it, just as a replay instantly made the query and its answer irrelevant. I heard the repeat loud and clear. Eight guys, led by Joey, had surrounded the car and, as if to dare me to try to do something about it, had begun to violently rock the vehicle back and forth while the epithets continued in a deluge of Biblical proportions. We endured this torrent for something over an hour until the jam loosened enough to leave the parking area. All the while, I struggled to restrain myself from jumping out of the car to face down this Joey-scum, me against the mob. Common sense, and my date, reigned supreme and I avoided the confrontation—for the moment. Had I then possessed my two black belts, the outcome might have been different. But I hadn’t and so I endured in frustrated teeth-gnashing silence.
The next morning my father, noting the residue on the car from the evening’s entertainment, made a beeline for Joey’s house, ignoring my entreaties not to go. Dad had grown up a Depression-era Jew, and had played for the NFL’s Redskins, so his answer for such situations usually centered on forceful repayment—with extra for interest. He wasn’t someone you wanted to be on the wrong side of—even if your premiums were up to date. Anyway, a loud and personal discussion between the fathers was held on Joey’s front porch, my dad doing most of the talking.
Immediately afterwards, a second loud conversation could be heard issuing from the interior of the house—Joey’s father to Joey. Seems Joey’s padre, a socially prominent dentist, didn’t care for the prospect of losing any of his Jewish clientele because of his son’s unabashed anti-Semitism. God forbid the anti-Semitism itself should have upset him as much.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I am standing in the hallway outside of the ballroom at the local YMCA, in attendance at a monthly high school dance. Out of nowhere, who shows up? Joey! He spots me first and before I even see him or have a chance to assume a defensive position, his right fist is buried wrist-deep in my gut. My breath is totally knocked out of me and I’m rolling to and fro, trying to regain my breath and overcome the excruciating pain I’m suffering. As I’m doing my job as human floor mop, trying to get somewhere near normal functioning so that I can deliver a well-placed size 12 to Joey’s gonads, he keeps gut punching me, simultaneously prolonging my agony and verbally assaulting me with a variety of anti-Semitic epithets: “fucking Jew bastard,” “dirty Jew,” “dirty Kike,” and so on. Gotta point out—originality wasn’t one of Joey’s long suits. My co-religionists have heard the litany for years, and, unfortunately, continue to do so. The difference is that today we deal with it a bit more forcefully. Just ask any Israeli.
But I digress. As the Joey-assault continues, a friend of mine happens to walk into the hallway and, being Jewish, is also upset. He steps in front of Joey and tells him to cease the diatribe. What does my friend receive for his temerity? A barrage of punches. Before you can say, “Beat up the anti-Semitic prick,” the two of them are going at it like Rocky Marciano and Pick Your Victim, accompanied by Joey’s continuing barrage of bigoted slurs, now directed at my friend, who, big surprise, ain’t having any.
Finally, cooler (read adult) heads prevailed and the two of them are kicked out of the building and the dance continued.
For several years after this incident, Joey always seemed to be on the periphery of my life. My personal bête noir was always lurking in the shadows of my existence, prepared to burst upon the scene whenever his gut and depraved brain dictated.
He’d see me pedaling my bike or riding my Vespa and pull his car over WAY too close, solely to spark a confrontation. This would be followed by an exchange of words, then a flurry of fists. Based on my prior experience at the dance, I at least managed to avoid a gut-targeted sucker punch.
Some of these confrontations left me a bit bloodied; in others I did the bloodying. In the latter circumstance, the pleasure I felt was so visceral, it was almost erotic. Unfortunately, unlike most cases where a bully backs down when his victim responds in kind, Joey possessed an unrequited hard-on for me.
Eventually, high school ended for both of us: graduation for me, followed by college. For Joey: an endless series of menial jobs, due largely to his lack of a diploma. It was a classic example of life collecting some payback. Only he was too fucking stupid to realize it.
The summer after my final year in college found me holding down two jobs, one by day and one by night, to earn enough money to pay for grad school. My day job was an almost forgettable slog—phoning bad debtors to instill the fear of their financial destruction should they continue to ignore their bills.
But the evening’s slavery—THAT was the experience! It was in a nearby beach town about an hour’s drive north of Boston, in a combo amusement park/fairway—a collection of cheap games and galleries whose sole raison d’etre was to liberate the nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars from the pockets of passersby.
I was running a so-called game of chance. “So-called” because the only chance involved was based on how much you’d be likely to lose. You plunked down your quarter, spun the wheel and hoped. The prize, if by some freak of nature you actually won, was a long, stuffed, plush snake. As a way of attracting more suckers—excuse me, contestants, I’d developed my own patter. Developed and polished over a number of months, it was pretty damn good.
Waving one of the prize stuffed snakes, I’d rattle on. “Be a winner while you’re eating dinner.” “Take a break and win a snake!” ”Drop the huff and win some stuff!” Folks walked by, listened and laughed or shook their heads and walked on—like in a used car lot. Some folks like your wheels and want some; others can’t get away fast enough. But not Joey! Suddenly, he materialized out of the passing crowd. As he made a beeline for me, he reached out with both hands and grabbed me around the throat, providing his best imitation of the not- yet-famous Boston Strangler. He quickly pinned me across the chance board at the front of the game booth and the pressure he was exerting on my neck increased by the second. It was getting more and more difficult to simply breathe. As the pressure around my neck ratcheted north, I frantically thrashed around with my arms, desperately trying to locate my owner-provided self-defense weapon.
The business end of a baseball bat attached to a wrist strap, it was designed to quickly discourage any troublemaker with a solid whack to the side of the head. Possibly kill? Maybe. But he who wants to start trouble, unprovoked, gets what he asks for. With luck, even more so.
The pressure continued to intensify, despite efforts of a couple of bystanders to separate Joey’s fingers from my neck. Others had gone screaming in search of a cop, but any success they had had finding one was not yet apparent. Joey accompanied his manual digitations with an ongoing litany. “Never learn, do you, you fucking Jew bastard! When I’m done, there’ll be one less Jew for the rest of us to have to deal with.” It was rapidly becoming obvious to me that my chances of getting rescued or saving myself were coming down to somehow getting this rabid dog posing as a human off of me, and the quicker the better.
Then—I made contact! My fingers finally located the bat! Gratefully, with an almost overwhelming excitement, I curled my fingers around the handle. My grip—I didn’t want to lose what could be my only opportunity—was vise-like. Joey’s face, features locked in an intent grimace, was inches from mine. He hadn’t yet noticed my shift in upper body position as I appeared to continue to struggle against him.
Putting all of my remaining energy into one last twist of my shoulders against his pressure, I swung the bat. Ted Williams would have been proud. It traveled in a tight flat trajectory to the side of Joey’s skull. Contact! The sound was like that of a watermelon hitting the street. For a brief second his grip tightened. Then, nothing! His hands fell away from my neck. I could breathe!
Joey’s condition was even better from my point of view. He totally folded up into a heap on the walkway in front of my stand, head hanging into his lap for lack of consciousness to support it. I staggered back from the counter, inhaling huge gulps of air. I moved forward and stood over the prostrate form of my assailant.
“Still feel like choking me, you bastard?” I spit out. No reply. ”Nothing to say?” Nothing indeed. The son of a bitch was out cold. About then the gendarmerie showed up, took statements from me and the witnesses, and then, after consideration, placed a set of matching bracelets around Joey’s wrists. He stirred a bit and, after receiving his Miranda rights, was hauled away.
Me? Fortunately, the cops said I was totally in the right—pure self-defense. So no worries of having to deal with the police or an excited prosecutor. My latest adventure with Joey was finished. The enmity continued over the years until Joey ultimately arrived at his final destination—the hottest part of Hell. May he rest there forever.
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