Typing With One Hand

Welcome to Typing With One Hand!

2009-06-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks for stopping by!

"Typing With One Hand" is a memoir of about 280 pages and there are 33 chapters all together. They document the course of my life going to a strict private Catholic school, transitioning into a public school and eventually into college in Detroit where I moved into an apartment and studied Theatre. All the while, dealing with my unique disability.

Major themes in the book are: self-actualization; family dysfunction; religious bigotry; sexual confusion; sustaining relationships; and brain tumors.

This website contains four sample chapters from the work: Chapter 1 is an introduction of myself and my disability; Chapter 9 illustrates some of the confusion involved with questioning your faith while in a private Catholic school; Chapter 15 is a story of how to deal with bullies in high school (grabbing their girlfriends' butts is not a good solution); and Chapter 21 looks into what it's REALLY like to be 18 and live away from home during college.

For more information on the book, please see the side bar to the right.

Also worth noting: When you order a copy of "Typing With One Hand" from the Lulu storefront to your right, the book now comes with a sample chapter from my current project, "Amsterdam" [working title] -- a novel about the prison system, education, City Councils and the auto industry in Southeast Michigan.

I really hope you enjoy your time here! Be sure to check out more of my writing at www.peterjurich.wordpress.com.

Chapter 1

2008-05-25T15:50:00.001-07:00

I hope you like this sentence.

At twenty-one years old, I decided to try my hand at softball, never picking up so much as a mitt since I was three. I was nervous, but the tall brooding and bald man organizing the game eased my discomfort a little.

“Hey, I’m Keith,” he said gruffly, extending a sweaty hand at me. “What’s your name?”

I shook his hand. “Peter,” I said. “How ya doin?”

Keith began sizing me up, trying to figure out what use I might be to his team of young college students. He ignored my question and instead asked his own. “So how long you been playing?”

“Eh, it’s been a few years,” I lied. “Sorry if I’m kind of rusty.”

“That’s OK, man,” he assured me with a hint of smile. “We’re all just playing for fun, right?”

Keith, a thirty-something with a gold stud in his ear, strode away to lay down the bases on the field as I sat with my friends in the bleachers waiting to get started. I was very close with most of the ten or so guys we had playing, so I felt fairly confident and unworried of the embarrassment I’d no doubt face. Once the game started, however, it became clear to me that Keith was not, as he said, playing for fun.

“COULD I HAVE THROWN THAT TO YOU ANY BETTER?” he yelled at me from shortstop when I missed a very easy catch on second base, which allowed the runner on first to advance. “C’MON!”

I let that comment slide and assured the large man that, no, he really could not have thrown it any better, and that it was entirely my fault. But even in the best of my politeness, he still continued to badger me. After I had successfully caught a ball, I hesitated in deciding which base to throw it to. In this instance, Keith loudly asked the entire field, “Would someone teach this kid the rules? C’mon!”

I couldn’t help but wonder if Keith had something to prove by consistently making fun of me in front of my friends. Was he even curious as to why I might not play softball as well as the others? Did he understand that not everybody grows up with a desire, let alone an ability, to play sports?

I wondered if he would understand, if there were a way to explain everything to him. I could tell him that my mother was an awesome softball pitcher back when she was in high school. Foreseeing the same future for me, she enrolled me in tee ball when I was just a toddler and I loved every minute of it, showing an impressive amount of sportsmanship and talent for the game. I could tell him how much fun it was being that carefree, spending Sunday afternoons on a team with matching turquoise shirts, being coached by our fathers while the sun shone brightly overhead. Would he understand?

Of course he’d understand! But what he would not understand is the one morning before kindergarten when I had finished my cereal. As I carried my bowl into the kitchen, my left hand started to shake.

“Mom,” I said curiously. “Look.” Mom and I both stared ominously at my shaking hand—the hand I would catch tee balls with. Mom assured me that it was nothing and walked me to school, but only because she didn’t want to worry me.

Could Keith have imagined Mom running back home out of breath, scared out of her mind and checking her medical book? There definitely wasn’t enough time between innings to explain this to him, but if he asked, I’d have gladly obliged. After calling my doctor, Mom rushed me down to Children’s Hospital in Detroit where it was discovered that I was having my second stroke, a year after my first.

I wondered if Keith has ever had an MRI, if he’s ever stayed overnight in a hospital, if he’s ever had tubes fed into his body where tubes aren’t supposed to go, if he’s ever had a stroke. It probably would’ve angered the other players if I delayed the game, took Keith to the side and said, “Listen, I know you expect every young man in college to know how to play sports, but hear me out for a minute.”

The doctors at Children’s Hospital had found it a little coincidental that I should have two strokes exactly one year apart from each other. After doing some tests, they discovered that the bleeds in my brain were caused by the growth of not one, but three, very unwelcome brain tumors. The tumors were located on the frontal lobe, the cerebellum, and deep in the ganglia. And so we scheduled three separate surgeries to remove each tumor.

The surgeries were successful, but success came at an awful price—that price being a very disgruntled and inoperable little boy. (Of course, I’m not dead so who am I to complain?) They were intricate procedures to be sure and no brain that is tampered with can avoid consequence. In this, I could no longer walk, feed myself, speak or smile properly, or use the left side of my body. After my third and final surgery, I was a couch-bound vegetable. For reasons known only to the doctors, I had to wear an eye patch (which isn’t really as cool as it sounds no matter how much you like pirates.) The only comfort I found in my life was replaying Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Summer Vacation over and over and over again. Everyday.

Mom was also wheeling me down to Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn three days a week for physical and occupational therapy.

Removing the tumors involved the risk of minor brain damage. Because they resided in the right side of my brain, the tumors had affected the left side of my body. This is because the two cerebral hemispheres that make up the brain are separated by a thick center group of fibers called the corpus callosum, which crosses information over. Specifically, I had temporarily lost the gross motor skills in my left hand and have yet to recover my fine motor skills.

Which brings us to the Shaky Left Hand.

Shaky has been with me for as long as I can remember and it’s annoying as hell. The physical and occupational therapy helped and I eventually got better, but not one-hundred percent. My left leg swung to the side when I walked, and I still had a shaky left hand that, over the years, we appropriately dubbed ‘the Shaky Left Hand.’

Shaky Left Hands will get you in trouble. They will touch things that aren’t yours, spill things that stain, and they shake. People can and will ask questions.

But in the case of Keith the disgruntled softball man, Shaky Left Hands will prevent you from playing sports as a boy, submitting you to humiliation as a young adult.

But Keith would never understand.

Chapter 9

2008-05-25T15:32:00.001-07:00

While I was in the hospital, Mom would get nightly phone calls from crazy aunts. “Oh, Cathy! I had the worst dream!” they'd cry. “I dreamed that Peter died!”

“Peter's not dead,” Mom would reply. “He's going to be OK.” The absurdity of this, Mom thought—she was the one with a child in the hospital and she was the one comforting others!

Naturally, she stayed a little protective of me, be it of something I have done or said... or sang.

* * *

Mom and I were sitting outside Haigh Elementary School one night waiting for Alex to get out of a Boy Scout meeting. I had Basket Case by Green Day stuck in my head.

“I went to a shrink,” I sang, “to da da dada da. She said da dada da that’s bringing me down. I went to a whore, she said my life’s a bo—”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Mom roared, honking the horn when her fists pounded on the steering wheel. “YOU WENT TO A WHAT?!”

“A whore,” I said quietly.

“Where did you hear that word?” Mom was really angry.

“It’s just a lyric in a song.”

“Well, I don’t want you singing that raunchy song ever again!” She was so mad, and I didn’t know why.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s a whore?”

Mom hesitated before saying, “It’s… it’s someone who gives really bad advice.” I wasn’t too sure what was wrong with that, but I never wanted to use that word ever again if Mom was going to explode again and blow up the car.

* * *

I couldn’t wait for Kyle to call me one evening that summer. It was the day that Banjo-Kazooie was coming out for Nintendo 64, and he was going to buy it right when his mom got home from work. He told me he’d call me as soon as he got in the door and put it in his system. And so I waited by the phone… for an hour… two hours, until I got too impatient to wait anymore and called him myself.

“Hello?”

“Did you get it?”

“Get what?”

“Banjo-Kazooie!”

“Oh… Yeah, I did. Who’s this?”

“Peter!”

“Oh, hey.”

“Hey! So can I come over?”

“Uhh, yeah, sure. I guess so.”

I pestered Mom enough, but that’s how you get what you want, so she eventually gave in and took me to Kyle’s.

Kyle’s room was a big upstairs loft that he shared with his brother. There wasn’t any finish on the walls so it was basically an attic with the frame showing and everything. Between the two beds on the far side of the room was a twenty-inch TV with a Nintendo 64 hooked up. Kyle said hi, but just barely taking his face away from the screen. I sat down on the bed and watched him play.

In Banjo-Kazooie, you play a bear named Banjo who has to save his sister Tooty from the evil witch Gruntilda with the help of your bird-friend Kazooie who lives in your backpack. It was the most anticipated game to come out that year and there I was, watching Kyle play when I could be. Except it’s his game, so what was I to do? I’d sound like a jerk saying, ‘Hey Kyle. You’ve been playing for three hours. Can I try now?’

But I said it anyway.

“Oh yeah, I guess,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Kyle was one of those people who hog videogames. He wouldn’t let me sit in the chair that was in front of the TV so I plopped down on his bed. When I had the controller in my hand, he kept telling me, “Now turn left here,” or, “Do a long jump here.” As long as he was still in control, it was OK for him to watch… until he got bored.

Kyle yawned really loud and wriggled a bit in his chair. “You’re sitting in my come, you know,” he told me restlessly.

“What?”

“You’re sitting in my come.”

I figured Kyle was just trying to confuse me or play with my head since he wasn’t playing with the videogame. He probably figured I would get so wrapped up in his coming that I’d say, ‘Forget this. Here’s your game.’ But instead, I did the opposite. I just shrugged it off and said, “Whatever you say, Kyle.”

“You’re gross,” he kept going.

I put the controller down this time. “I’m gross?”

“Yeah. You don’t mind sitting where I come. That’s disgusting.”

I looked at his bed. Did he come from the bed? I didn’t get it.

“What are you talking about, coming from where I’m sitting?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t come from there. I come there.”

“So you sleep here.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No. I guess not.”

I went to Kyle’s house to play a videogame. What I got was a whole new outlook on life. Kyle explained to me about the birds and the bees and how the penis goes in the vagina and I always wondered how babies were really born anyway and it’s not even come like coming and going, but it’s cum like a spontaneous cumbustion exploding wildly into the midnight sky—and my goodness what a topic to bring up to a guest!

Mom was waiting in the car outside. “Did you have a good time?” she asked.

“Boy, did I ever!”

* * *

Me and Kyle’s talk couldn’t have come at a better time. We eventually began our Human Growth and Development classes with Mrs. Gershwin who was brave enough to teach the class. Fortunately, I was already a pro on the subject thanks to Kyle.

“Sex,” Mrs. Gershwin hesitated before a class of thirty students who were all eager to learn some new dirty words, “is, well, it’s, it’s like this. A man. Right, a man, he, well, he sticks his, um, his erection into—an erection is a, it’s a penis that is hard. Anyway, yeah, he places, or shoves rather—well it’s kinda both—his erection into the woman’s vaginal, uhh, vagina.”

As students started to learn more, the more some things clicked. It started off as quiet whispers in the hallway and they eventually pushed it to chuckles in the classroom. Before I knew what hit me, kids were coming up to me and shouting like it was nothing.

“Hey Penis! Hey Pee Pee!”

Apparently, my name, Peter, sounds like Penis. It was something no one ever noticed until this damn class. No one wanted to take responsibility for the teasing. When I confronted those “friends,” they all gave me the same response that usually credited some famous Peter:

“What? No way, man. I think it’s a cool name,” one friend told me. “I mean, seriously. Like Saint Peter? He was way cool.”

Great. So now not only was I a slang term for a gross body part, but now I was ‘way cool’ for denying Jesus.

* * *

Mom came home that night hoping to make dinner, clean a bit and go to bed. Instead she got me.

“My name means ‘penis!’” I cried to her. “Why did you name me that?”

What?” she asked. “I didn’t name you Penis.”

“You did!” I insisted. “Ever since Human Growth, I haven’t heard the end of it! I couldn’t be named Mike or John or something normal!”

“Why? So you can be like everyone else?” she asked. “If I yelled for Mike or John in the grocery store, half the place would come running.”

It was a good argument, but still, how could she do this to me? Did she really prefer to have her son tortured and outcast the rest of his life just because of a funny name?

“I like your name,” she continued. “I didn’t want to name you what everyone else was naming their kids anyway. It’s so typical.” I didn’t really understand how a life of agony makes up for having an original name so I just cried.

It’s not like Mom liking my name stopped anyone from making fun of me. Even harmless variations of my name that other people came up with were annoying and I’d get upset. Pete, Petey P, PJ, Peter Pan, Peter Cottontail, Peter Peter Pumpkin-Eater, Penis Boy, Peter Piper, Peter Rabbit, Pita Bre—

“Wait. Penis Boy?”

“Yeah, I mean, your name is another word for penis, right?”

“Shut up, jerk!” I told the stupid stringy-haired boy who called me that.

And before you know it, you’re on the playground before school even starts, in a fight with a kid from a grade above. Everyone was going Ooooooooooh. But it wasn’t the fun ooh you say when Robert Savel spills his milk at lunch. This kind of ooh was lower and it sounded like something bad was gonna happen.

When the ooh’s were over with and done, I found myself caught in a circle of students with only me and the stringy-haired boy in the middle, and I had no idea what was coming until the stringy-haired boy shoved me into the fence.

Normally I always liked attention, but this was not what I ever had in mind. I was wily enough and able to push the stringy-haired boy back a couple times, but he cried for his friend who was much taller and fatter than both of us combined. I’m no fool but I am a little cowardly so I tried running away, but the circle of students barricaded me in, shouting things like “Get back in there, Penis Boy!”

My adrenaline was pumping and I couldn’t back down. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I had to prove I’m tough, even if I lost. I tried jumping on the stringy-haired boy one time, but his fat friend had plans to punch me in the shoulder and knock me down.

I stayed on the ground for a few seconds to try to catch my breath. When I got up ready to fight again, everyone had gone to class. It was over as quickly as it began. Blessed Spirit very rarely had a fight, and even in my roughed up condition, I was actually kind of proud to be a part of this one.

When you’re in a fight in school, your fellow students will think you’re “bad news.” Being bad news is actually good news because then you become the tough kid in school and no one wants to mess with you because they think you’ll hurt them. When you’re bad news, girls whisper behind your back about how cute and mysterious you are. When Mike Consiglio got in a fight and had his tooth chipped with a hockey stick, he had girls whispering every which way.

I felt like a celebrity.

At least I would have if anyone really cared about me in a fight with the stringy-haired kid and fat kid from the upper grade. What you’ll never even know about being bad news is that you gotta keep fighting people to keep the reputation, and I wasn’t about to fight any more assholes so I guess it’s back to being a nobody. People may still have called me Penis Boy, but at least Mom wasn’t going to yell about grass stains on my brand new Dockers.

My nose was bleeding for the first part of the day, but no one cared. When the fight’s over and there’s nothing to watch anymore, people stop thinking you’re tough. Before Homeroom that day, I came in early and told Mrs. Glenn, “People are making fun of my name!”

“Making fun of your name?” she asked. “Who would do a thing like that? Peter is a great name!”

“No, it’s not. It means ‘penis.’”

“Excuse me?” she said appalled. I cried to Mrs. Glenn and dried my tears before anyone else even came into the classroom. Mrs. Glenn made a speech before the day was over:

“Names are sacred,” she announced to the class. “Names are very personal. We all have one, and I don’t want to hear anything more about students here making fun of somebody else’s name.” Everyone in the class looked at me. They all knew. “We are to respect the each and individual names of our peers. They are a gift that our parents and God gave us!”

I thanked Mrs. Glenn for the speech because it was very nice of her but I would’ve worded it differently. I’m pretty sure God didn’t give me this name. He would’ve been smart and named me Mike or John.

* * *

As time went on, religion class discussions drifted further and further into unspeakable topics—topics almost impossible to discuss in our class.

“As Christians,” Mrs. Terwillinger preached, her beak nose poking dangerously out of her curly blond hair, “we are tested every day. It is imperative, especially in this time of preparation for our third, and quite possibly most important, commandment that we pass each test presented to us. The devil is going to try and stray us away from the path of our Heavenly Father and we have an obligation to deny his evil doings. We cannot ever give in. Some temptations are harder to resist than others. Sure, it will get us out of trouble to lie to our parents. It’s easy to blame the broken vase on your little sister, I know. But the temptations I speak of today go beyond such examples that may seem superficial. I speak of temptation that only we know about. Temptations that derive from the sexual. I’m speaking about impure thoughts and masturbation.”

Laughter sputtered around the room. “Oh my GOD!” Scott said unquietly. “Jesus! Did she just say that?”

“Now, Scott,” Mrs. Terwillinger approached him kindly, “please don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Yeah, dude,” I spat my foot out of my mouth. I didn’t see what was so funny about the discussion. It’s something everyone does so what’s the big deal? “We’re just talking about masturbating,” I said.

Gasp from the whole class.

“Peter Jurich!” Mrs. Terwillinger raged. “Another improper outburst like that and we’ll be sending you to the office!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Terwillinger.” Bitch.

“Well, I hope you are! Anyway,” she continued, “masturbation, though it is often done privately and is of no immediate harm to others, is a sin nonetheless. It requires lustful thoughts—thoughts that are harmful to you. The Lord tells us we shall never covet our neighbor’s wife. Furthermore, we should never covet anyone. It is an invasion of his or her person and physical love is only to be practiced within the confines of Holy Matrimony!

“Now Peter,” she continued. “Since you apparently find masturbation a fickle topic, you then would not mind reading the section in the religion text aloud for us.”

Mrs. Terwillinger didn’t like my family. She felt that it was wrong of my parents to divorce and disrupt the nuclear family unit. She sucked a lot and would never waste any excuse to embarrass me in front of the whole class. She knew that I was sensitive too, that I cried easily and she definitely used that to her advantage. After all, she would never volunteer anyone to read anything had she not known they didn’t come to class prepared.

“I don’t have my book today, Mrs. Terwillinger,” I mumbled, sinking into my chair. “I accidentally left it in my locker.”

“You left your religion book at locker?” she repeated slowly for all the class to hear.

“Yes.”

“Goodness gracious, Peter! I can understand leaving your science book in your locker. I can even understand leaving your math book in your locker! But your religion book? How could you?”

Mrs. Terwillinger never used to yell at students very much. By all means, she may have been incapable of it. Her appearance was probably the least intimidating of any teacher I’ve had so far: She was very short and pudgy with small beady eyes. She looked liked a shorter Big Bird, I always thought, with a long nose and large feathery yellow hair. Coincidentally, she squawked when anything surprised her. So instead of yelling, she enjoyed sending kids on a guilt trip of the worst kind. She would pretend she wasn’t angry but instead a bit confused as to how the minds of the incompetent youth of today worked.

“You know,” she said as she paced the front on the classroom, “maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I always used to hold religion in a much higher esteem than any other subject. Sure, I enjoyed learning geography and language studies, but I always used to find that deepening my faith made me a far more secure and confident person. And I found the more I paid attention in class, the closer I became to God.

“I really don’t understand what happened. Today, it really seems that students don’t find the subject of religion to be as important, or as interesting, as the others.” She quickly shot a glance at me to make sure my eyes were starting to water. The entire class’s attention was focused on me. That’s right—everyone was giving attention to the heathen boy named Penis who comes from a bad family with divorced parents who hate God. This boy will never be capable of loving, they all thought.

Mrs. Terwillinger persisted further as if she hadn’t already won.

“Sure, there are students out there who come from families that hold a strong Catholic upbringing, but still there are children who don’t seem to have any desire to discover where they come from and who they are. They insist on neglecting their place in the world. They insist on coming to class without their text…

“Now Michael, would you be so kind as to lend Peter your book so he can read aloud the section on masturbation?” Then she’d add a sigh and an “I just don’t get it” to allow the guilt to sink in just one more time.

* * *

Woody ran away a lot (the damn hamster) and I got pretty tired of it. Every time he did that, I had to make promises to God. Oh Lord above, I’d pray at night, please bring Woody home safely even though he’s probably just in the basement. If You do this, I promise I’ll stop masturbating at night, for I’m regrettably woeful that I might soil Your good name each time I soil my good underpants. Please God, bring Woody back to his cage. Woody would always come back and I would be happy.

And then one night when I came home from Dad’s, Mom had some bad news.

“Peter,” she said, sitting me down on the couch, a frown on her face, “I don’t want to tell you this, but Woody passed away today. I went to clean out his cage, and he wouldn’t wake up. I’m sorry.”

Mom hugged me and I was a little sad.

But part of me was also a little relieved. Woody being gone forever meant no more promises to God, which meant I could masturbate anytime I wanted to, day or night, and so Mrs. Terwillinger must be the biggest whore in the world because her advice was always really bad.

Chapter 15

2008-05-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

The two-mile run was the midterm exam for gym class that we’d been training the last month and a half for. It was a really dumb choice to have gym class first hour. Mr. Tuglas would lead us down to the track in our running shorts at 7:30 in the morning and, as expected, we would run. The track was in the middle of a grove at the bottom of a hill so all the mist and morning dew would descend down there making the track colder than it really was in the middle of November. All the boys wailed and complained over how their nuts are shrinking and their balls are in their throats, making all the girls laugh because genitals are funny.

When we all got onto the track field and our balls shrunk enough, we started stretching out. Mr. Tuglas announced, “OK! Everyone shut up! Here’s the deal! This is your two-mile run! Gentlemen, you got twenty minutes to go around the track eight times! Ladies, you got twenty-two!”

A bunch of girls complained about this: ”That is so sexist, Mr. Tuglas! We should get just as equal amount of time to finish as the boys! I bet we could run it in fifteen minutes!”

“Shut up, and deal with it,” Mr. Tuglas said back.

“Oh, Mr. Tuglas! You hate me! I’m gonna cry!” a girl would say, giggling and slapping Mr. Tuglas on the wrist. Said girl was one of many who were not only fooling around after hours with our noble gym faculty, but were also really happy for that extra two minutes at the end of the exam.

When the two-mile started, I was doing really well. I kept pace with everyone. I breathed deep. I didn’t hurry. I was just moving at a really good pace. It was discouraging when Slawomir had lapped me twice, but he was captain of the track team and lapped everyone else twice, too. We’d all call out, “Look at him go!” Then we’d try to block his path on his seventh lap. No dice though—he’d push right past us like we were the ribbon at the end of his victorious track meet.

The more people who finished and sat down on the grass, the more frustrated I was with myself. I started breathing harder and running faster on my sixth lap, and half the class (even some girls) would call out, “C’mon, Pete! You got this!”

“Hustle, Peter!” Mr. Tuglas shouted. “We wanna go inside!”

“Yeah, Pete! I’m freezing my nuts off!”

“Watch your mouth for the ladies, Paul!”

“Sorry, Mr. Tuglas.”

“Their called ‘balls,’ not ‘nuts.’”

“Balls, Mr. Tuglas. Yes sir.”

I ran so much that I might’ve been on my seventh lap, and it was only I and maybe three other people on the track. (We’re the same four people who always got picked last in basketball.) Everyone was waiting on me, but I had an idea. See, whenever I ran on a treadmill, I liked to close my eyes. I found it really relaxing. I could imagine I’m anywhere—on a beach, in the mountains, anywhere relaxing. I could always think about whatever I wanted to when I ran with my eyes closed. I didn’t have to worry about how much farther I had on the track or who’s looking at me and laughing. When my eyes were closed, I didn’t care about anything.

Until I crashed into a plastic garbage bin, of course. Then I had a problem. I fell down and the bin went rolling across the track. Garbage flew everywhere—banana peels, McDonald’s wrappers, failed tests. Meanwhile, on the other side of the track, my class was roaring with laughter. Frozen balls could never trump the not-so-athletic kid in gym tripping over a trashcan. Blood trickled down my kneecaps. “Yeah!” the class shouted. “Go Pete! You’re the fuckin’ man!” Mr. Tuglas just shook his head and wrote in his notebook.

After I picked myself up and started running again, someone shouted, “Good job, faggot!” I looked to my right. On the other side of the fence surrounding the track, where the juniors and seniors played football, soccer and baseball, Jeffrey Ginger was yelling at me. Jeffrey Ginger was a brute of a senior. He was about 6”2’, a rather big-boned individual with black sideburns and an unshaven face. “Stupid faggot,” he said. “Watch where you’re going.”

Jeffrey Ginger intimidated me. Not only was he a senior, but also he was a big senior. His choices of words were a little primitive, but that’s because he was stupid. I wish I could’ve ignored him, but he kept going on until I snapped right back. It was very unlike me.

“Fuck you, Jeffrey!” I shouted at him, and nearly fell over from shocking myself. I suddenly became weak in the knees and everything felt like a dream world. What did you do? I asked myself. Why would you say that to a senior with big black side burns?

“What did you say, you little shit?” he demanded my response from the other side of the fence. (Thank God for that fence.) He was running as fast as me now, circling the track.

“You heard me, asshole!” I wouldn’t let myself shut up.

“You fuckin’ shit! I oughta jump this fence and beat your ass!”

“Fuck you, pussy! I’d like to see you try!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll do it!”

“So get on with it!”

“Bitch!”

“Shit!”

“Cock sucker!”

“Mother fucker!”

My mouth was running a mile a minute, unlike my two-mile-an-hour legs. Jeffrey Ginger and I yelled at each other my entire last lap of the track and before I knew it, Mr. Tuglas was clocking me in for a personal record of twenty-six minutes.

“You just failed your midterm, Peter,” Mr. Tuglas proclaimed to the entire laughing class of 2004 and me. I didn’t care.

Jeffrey Ginger and his class were on their way up the hill to the locker room. Their gym class was over, so they got to go inside for the last twenty minutes and play basketball. Our class was to stay on the track field so that Mr. Tuglas could announce my failure one more time, in case some kids didn’t hear about me running slower than most of the girls and into a trashcan.

On the way back up the hill and towards the gym, some of the guys congratulated me jokingly. “That was one hell of a run, Pete.” “Yeah man. How’re them knees?” They all knew I felt bad enough about making a complete ass of myself out there in front of two other classes, so they tried picking up my spirits. The only thing I could do was lift my head high and laugh it off.

Then I ran into big Jeffrey Ginger sitting on the steps leading into the gym. He was hunched on the stairs like a Neanderthal. His feet were resting on one step under his butt, and he was hanging his wrists over his knees, keeping his hands limp. His neck was arched so much that when he looked up at me, I got completely nervous and found myself extremely unsure of how to react.

Jeffrey was with his girlfriend, Cassandra. She was a tall blonde in my gym class with the finest ass I’ve ever seen in those pink shorts of hers. She was standing in front of Jeffrey Ginger with her back facing me. I would’ve liked to do nothing but stare at her assets, but that would’ve given Jeffrey Ginger something else to glare at me over, as if he already wasn’t going to beat the living hell out of me when I walked by.

All I had to do was look straight ahead when I walked up the stairs, as if to say, Yeah, I called you a mother fucker. So what? But he was glaring at me so much, and Cassandra’s butt was looking so good that I nearly tripped all over again. Just look ahead, walk up the stairs, I kept thinking. Don’t even think about taking another peek at Cassandra’s butt.

By this point, the Shaky Left Hand was going haywire and didn’t even know what to do with itself, I was so nervous. Should I keep it in my pocket? Should I let it swing awkwardly? What do I do? I ran out of time deciding what to do with Shaky and I found myself with a big chunk of Cassandra’s firm butt cheek in Shaky’s grip.

The moment was only for an instant, but it was enough kindling for the fire to crank up the heat. I was already tired of Shaky getting me in so much trouble and now this? It’ll be OK, I told myself as I tried to coolly walk up the stairs. Just explain to them your disability and how sometimes your left hand gets a little crazy. It’s never grabbed butts before, but there’s a first for everything, so please don’t cave my face in, asshole.

The look of malice Jeffrey Ginger gave was of such displeasure, I stuttered incoherently to them both. “Sorry, umm, my left hand, uhh, surgery… brain tumors.” When I turned around to apologize to Cassandra, she gave me a seductive eye. The whole thing just confused the hell out of me—beautiful pink shorts, Jeffrey Ginger’s hunching glare, Shaky’s acting out, and now Cassandra’s lusty gaze—so I just walked to the locker room hoping that Jeffrey Ginger’s fist won’t slam me too hard against the tile walls. My brain is too sensitive for a fistfight.

When we were all crowded in the locker room and guys were naked, running around whipping towels at each other, I tried as hard as I could to stay as invisible as possible. I did a really good job of it, too. I didn’t even go to the mirror with hair gel. It was impossible to get a spot on the mirror anyway; all the dudes crowded around the 4x5 sheet of glass like it was pornography, painstakingly waxing each spiky tip of their hair and delicately shaping each strand. After this, you’d see the whole group of them tilting their heads every which way, puckering their lips a little bit. Whatever gel anyone had left on the fingers was slid through the eyebrows. It was actually kind of comical to watch the arrogance, but I had more important matters to attend to.

I was able to slip out of the locker room unnoticed. I scurried down the hallway as fast as I could without breaking into a noticeable stride, but stopped (or stumbled) when someone had kicked my backpack forward. I looked back and saw Jeffrey Ginger fuming.

“Lay off my girlfriend, faggot!” he yelled dopily so everyone could hear him picking on the sophomore. I was actually a little thrilled at the idea of passers-by overhearing that I had the audacity to hit on the football star’s girlfriend.

“It was an accident!” I said.

“An accident, huh? How about I kick your ass?”

“Go for it, prick!”

“I will, little bitch!”

“So do it, dumb-dumb!”

“You’re asking for it, fuckshit!”

“Good!” I proclaimed.

I learned a sacred high school lesson that day. There I was, a ninety-pound sophomore talking back to and swearing at a senior three times my size. I don’t know why my mouth was rambling bad words, but I’m thankful for it because I learned that if you carry yourself strongly and confidently, no one will fuck with you. Ever.

Jeffrey Ginger never kicked my ass. In fact, I’d like to believe that he avoided me in the halls for the rest of the year to also avoid humiliation. This was my only confrontation with the fool, and all we did was shout profanities at each other. Since I didn’t show him I was scared, he didn’t have anyone to intimidate, and therefore, no one to feel empowered over. And since everyone has the rest of their lives to put their money where their mouth is, we might as well have fun making empty promises to one another while we’re young.

This doesn’t mean in any way that I was glad to have the Shaky Left Hand to show me these life lessons. I still hated it more than anything in the world. Why me? Why am I plagued with it? And why is Nick, the popular Italian kid, staring at me in biology class?

“Hey, Pete,” he whispered. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but… what’s up with your hand?”

What’s up with my hand? All I was doing was sitting at my desk listening to the teacher go on about chromosomes or hydrogen or something, and Shaky was still getting me in trouble!

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Well man, it was just sorta… waving at me slowly and like… wriggling its fingers. I dunno, it was kinda freaky. What’s up with that?”

I was agitated. It was extremely difficult to tell Nick what was “up with that.” I had no idea it was so automatic! I knew it did stupid things like wobble awkwardly at my side, spill tall glasses of milk at dinner and grab Cassandra’s supple buttock, but now it was communicating with people without my knowing! I tried to explain to Nick about the brain tumors and the surgery—the best I could, given that we were in class—but he only shrugged it off and said, “Oh man. Wow. I thought something was kinda crazy about it.”

The Shaky Left Hand was always begging people to ask questions or make snide remarks behind my back. If I walked down an empty hall, except for a small group chatting by a locker, they’d stop what they were doing and stare at my walk. Whenever I passed by, it was not hard to hear the giggling and the footsteps of some idiot doing an impression of my swinging leg.

* * *

“I like your walk,” Mom said when I brought this to the dinner table. “It gives you character.” I was sitting on the other side of the kitchen table, pouring my eyes all over the cloth, and she still said, “It’s a nice little gate.”

“A gate?” I asked, sucking snot and wiping the excess on my sleeve.

“Yeah. You know, it just swings a little bit. That’s all.” Moms are supposed to make you feel better by saying, “I think it shows everyone of your past, and you should be proud to have survived such a tragedy!”

“Yeah, that’s fine and all,” I blubbered, “but I’d much rather not have had brain tumors than have to deal with the entire school laughing at my gate.”

“Actually, its spelled G-A-I-T.”

“Oh, OK.”

I never wanted or asked for a gait. The more upset I got, the more frustrated with me Mom became. “Listen,” she said in a tone that told me the subject was closed, “you’re not blind. You’re not mentally disabled. You can walk, you can eat, you can read, and—for Christ’s sake—you’re alive! You survived brain tumors! Do you realize how impressive that is? Just be thankful for that and stop feeling so sorry for yourself! You walk with a gait, and your left hand is a little wacky, but you have them! You look completely normal, and no one will ever notice these things about you unless you bring it up to them!”

I knew Mom was right. Feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere, but it’s hard when you’re in high school—“the best years of your life,” Dad said—and they’re not the best years of your life.

“You should be thankful that all you have is a bad left side!”

Mom didn’t understand. She could never understand the Shaky Left Hand or my gait. She has never tripped over her own foot in the hallway or grabbed Cassandra’s ass by accident. How could she have?

I imagine that life with the Shaky Left Hand is like a dog’s life with a tail. His tail doesn’t really do anything useful, but if you see a dog without one, you’d be unsettled.

I’m the same case. It would be no different if I didn’t have a left hand at all. The only thing it’s good for is so people don’t look at me funny at first. But not like that matters—as soon as I get up to walk away, people whisper, “Why’s that kid walking so silly?”

Sometimes, dogs get yelled at for knocking over vases or clocks or whatever priceless item. Their masters blame them and hit them with newspapers, but it’s not the dog’s fault! It has no control over its tail! He’s excited, his tail wags, he walks somewhere, and CRASH! No more vase, clock, or whatever priceless item.

Same case: I’m hungry, and my potato needs butter. But I get excited for the butter as I’m reaching for it, almost there. I get excited, and my hand shakes. Shakes so much, so excited, and CRASH! Milk over the damn floor! No one hits me with a newspaper, but the feeling of apologetic embarrassment still sets in.

Since brain tumors are hereditary, marriage might be difficult for me. My girlfriend will have a hard time responding to: “I love you, baby. Will you marry me? By the way, there’s a twenty-five percent chance our children will walk strange. They’ll hate it, I know, but other people will sure get a kick out of it!”

PHRASES TO KNOW IF LEFT HAND DOESN’T WORK:

“Mom, can you cut this up for me?”
“No, we can’t park in the handicapped zone.”
“Well, when I was younger, I had three brain tumors and two strokes…”
“Damnit.” (used most often in the shower when soap is dropped for the thirteenth time while scrubbing right arm)
Please don’t pick me.
“Can you light this joint for me?”
“Oops—I didn’t mean to grab your boob.”
“It’s just the way I type.”
“Sorry.”

PHRASES NOT NEEDED WHEN LEFT HAND DOESN’T WORK:

“Does anyone want anything while I’m up?”
“Can you show me how to play that on guitar?”
“I’ll be Center!”
“I’ll be Goalie!”
“I’ll be Defense!”
“I’ll be Offense!”
“Yes, I wanted to see about getting a job here as a waiter?”
“Oh, let me get that for you.”
“May I have this dance?”
“Sweet—I love Xbox!” (The controller is too big to play one-handed.)
“Amen.”

Chapter 21

2008-05-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

A party of any kind seemed to me a terrible idea. Three people coming over for beers made my stomach churn. Not just because I didn’t like beer just yet, but the last thing in the world I wanted to do was entertain guests. Everyday after class at 12:30 or so, I’d have to shoot down Second, turn left on Warren, right on Trumbull, down I-94, get off on Ford Road, left on Greenfield, right on Michigan Avenue, sit in Dearborn traffic, be half an hour late to work. Five hours later, at 5:30, I’d get off work, order a pizza, take it home and eat half of it with Mom, then shoot back down Ford Road, down I-94 traffic, right on Trumbull, left on Forest, back to the apartment, put leftover pizza in the fridge with a note that says “MINE! DO NOT TOUCH!” and barely make rehearsal by 7:00.

With all of this wallet-wrenching effort, you’d think I was the lead in the show. Not the case at all. Given that I got the part by asking the director for it, it was only right that my part was to run onstage at the end of the second act in my underwear, scream about a guy with a gun, and run offstage fifteen seconds later. That was my debut for the Bonstelle Theatre Company and I had to be at every rehearsal five nights a week, just sitting. In my underwear.

But none of this was a problem; I was living the dream! I was an actor, and real actors go through this kind of thing everyday, sacrificing their energy (or lack thereof) for their craft. This is how stars were born. Mom always said, “The bullshit opens doors,” and I was certainly dealing with a lot of it. After the show had its premiere, directors were going to say, “That kid in his underpants was fantastic! And he’s only a freshman, you say? We’ll cast him in every show next semester!” Next semester would be better. Casting agents would go see my shows and think I really had something. They were going to approach me afterwards, cards in hand, saying, “Call me. We’ll make you a star, kid,” but I’d say, “If you make me a star, you have to make Scott one, too.” Scott and I could then move to Chicago and realize our dreams as the most successful actors to come out of Detroit Rock City.

I got back to the apartment in time to find a party of six people and half of my pizza gone. Good thing they were old friends, too, because I snapped.

“Peter!” Ryan said, running up for a hug.

“Who’s been eating my pizza?” I blurted, pushing Ryan away.

“Nice to see you, too, man.”

“I had an entire pizza in this fridge! Now it’s damn near gone!”

Scott walked up with a smile. “Pete Nut, you’re so uptight. Just sit. Have a drink.”

“I want my pizza,” I grumbled, munching on what was left of it. I went and sat in the living room with other familiar faces, among them was Katie, saving a seat next to her on the couch for Scott. It was by no means a party in the least, but I wanted everyone out. I wanted my apartment to myself and I wanted my whole pizza.

When everyone left, I remembered the other half of the pizza was what Mom and I ate at home only hours before. I silently felt like a jackass, but I quickly got over it when Scott retired to his room with Katie, softly closing the creaky door.

“Luke, doesn’t Scott still have a girlfriend?” Luke just shrugged and went to bed himself.

The next morning, Scott claimed not to have had sex with her.

“God, chill out, Pete!” he boomed. “We just cuddled, man! It wasn’t anything! Sometimes it’s just nice to cuddle, ya know? We didn’t do anything else!”

“Well, she obviously likes you. Be careful.”

“No, she doesn’t! She’s gotta boyfriend, OK? And, I mean, my girl hasn’t exactly been around for a while—fuckin’ gymnastics an’ shit—so why not cuddle with someone? You gotta lot to learn about love, Pete! Jesus!”

* * *

Our first party at the apartment was a complete flop. Our friend Diana was one of two girls there and Scott’s cousin went between both the entire night telling each how much she looks exactly like Jessica Simpson and he might have a part for her in his movie. He knows a director somewhere and it’s going to be a Box Office smash hit.

Everyone else complained about what a damn sausage fest it was.

This is where Mike stepped in. Mike was a guy from Scott’s music business class. He was a tall and suave young man with the nicest wardrobe I’d come across. The man liked his boots, zip-up sweaters and bandanas, all of different colors. He pulled it off well. I kind of wondered if I’d look like an idiot if I tried stealing some of his style. The sweaters maybe, but bandanas were not an option given the shape of my head.

“Ya’ll need to learn how to throw down a party,” Mike told us one day after class. He was right. At the end of the first party, none of us were drunk or having sex. It was a disappointment. “So I’ma help you stooges out.”

Mike told us that in order to get a party going, we had to start getting the word out to everyone at least two weeks in advance, and he meant everyone. Tell your friends to invite their friends. You don’t have to know these people, but who cares? A party’s a party.

The living room would have to be cleared out. A room as big as that had to be a dance floor. All it took was Scott to move all of the furniture into my room a week before the party.

“Where do I sleep with a coffee table on my bed?” I asked when I got home from work one day.

“Pete! This shit’s gotta get done, man! It’s not my fault you couldn’t help us move this shit!”

I guess I didn’t help them move things around, so I could at least volunteer my room as storage, but a week before the party?

Luke came back to the apartment a few days before the big night with some important news. “‘Jenny’s staying the night Saturday!” he said with a big grin on his face.

“Fuck yeah, mother fucker!”

“Cool, man. How’d you manage this one?” I asked.

“Well, she’s back from college this weekend and when I told her about the party, she got really excited!”

As was Luke. He spent his free time cleaning his room so as not to scare off the girl he was sure would take his virginity. He managed to keep his composure until Friday night rolled around. We were all sitting in Luke’s room, imagining what it would be like for him the next night. How perfect it would be. He and Jenny would both be a little drunk and probably lie down to cuddle and talk. The talk would lead to whispering sweet nothings, which would lead to kissing, groping, feeling, dry-humping, feeling, kissing, groping, kissing, kissing, kissing…

“Oh shit!” Luke panicked. “What do I do then?”

From what I understood, Jenny was a girl of experience. I also understood that Luke’s experience with the opposite sex rivaled mine in the ‘slim to none’ department. “Seriously, fuck, what do I do?” Luke asked. “She’s gonna know I’m a virgin and get all freaked out!”

It was a good thing Scott was there to help us out. “What do you need to know, man?” he asked

“I don’t know! Where do I go after making out?”

Scott stood up in the middle of the room and acted out his own game of charades, doing the motions he was describing. “Well, let’s say you’re going at it and you’re dry-humping the fuck out of each other, right? Let’s say she starts breathing hard and moaning (Scott closed his eyes and began feeling himself up), ‘Luke! Oh Luke! I want you! I’m so hot! Oh, my God! Oh, my God, Luke!’ right? And she’s fuckin’ humping you, man, I mean fuckin’ yeah, and she’s pretty experienced, so she knows what to do, but she’s gonna want you to take charge.”

“So how do I take charge?”

“Just tear her bra off, man.”

“Well, that’s what I’m talking about!” Luke realized. “Like, I’ve never even done that!” I began to feel that Luke and I had more in common than I thought.

“Dude! It’s easy!” Scott was even more excited at the idea of actually having something to teach us. “You just sorta—ya know, you’re goin’ at it—and you just sorta reach around, grab the clasp and snap your fingers, man! It’s easy!”

“Snap my fingers?”

“Yeah, because the clasp is like a hook, right? Two hooks come together and…”

Luke wasn’t getting the visual very well. I had a vague idea from doing Mom’s laundry, but that didn’t mean I was at any advantage.

“Ya know what? Here!” Scott said, a light bulb going off. “I’ll be right back!” He ran down the hall to his room, leaving Luke and I with bewildered expressions. Whatever Scott was up to, it had to be good because he ran out with such enlightenment, you’d think he just figured out how pick up his dishes.

When Scott came back to the room, he had a black bra with him. I hoped it wasn’t Katie’s, because they didn’t have sex, just cuddled, right? Anyway, Scott strapped the bra to the back of Luke’s computer chair and demonstrated.

“See man, like this,” he said, reaching around the chair and unhooking the silky bra so that it fell softly to the hardwood floor. “Now you try.” He refastened the clasp around the chair and stepped away.

Luke leaned over his chair. “So like this then?” he asked, reaching around the chair and fiddling with the backside. “Huh, this is really… Damnit, I almost… Shit. Scott, I can’t do this.”

“Dude! It’s easy! Just fuckin’ do it! Pretend it’s your girl, man! The chair is Jenny, saying, ‘Luke! Take it off! Please!’ Do it, Luke!”

“I can’t! The chair is really weird! I need something more, ya know, shaped like a person!”

“There’s gotta be something else around here,” Scott said, looking around the room, thinking about what else was in the apartment. “How about a pillow, or a folded blanket, or a…”

Scott stopped thinking when his eyes rested mischievously on me. The dawn was frightening.

“No!” I said. “No, you don’t! No way!”

“Oh c’mon, Pete!”

“I’m not putting on a bra!”

Luke was cracking up at the thought of this, but showed no sign of protest. “Pete! Do it!” he enthused with Scott. “Oh man, put it on!”

I especially didn’t want to do it for the benefit of Luke Duncan. What did he ever do for me, huh? Nothing! He was just some stupid asshole who was invading my space and now trying to invade my body!

“No, Scott! I’m not putting on your girlfriend’s bra!”

Ten minutes and a world of coaxing later, I was sitting shirtless on Luke’s bed with a scowl across my face and a glossy undergarment across my chest. Scott couldn’t control his laughter, and between spurts of his, Luke put his hand on my leg. “Hey baby,” he said with a wink.

“That’s it!” I jumped up. “I’m not doing this! This is stupid!”

“Sit down and take it like a man, Pete! Don’t you want Luke to get laid?”

“Yeah, don’t you want me to get laid?”

“The chair was working fine!” I tried convincing them. “Let’s just use that again!”

“Oh, sit down! Luke would do the same for you!”

“I wouldn’t want him to!”

“Why? You don’t find me attractive?”

“Oh, Lord.” I slumped on the bed and submitted to the moment. There was no getting out of it anyway.

“So how do I do this again?” Luke asked.

“It’s just a clasp,” Scott explained again. “Like snapping your fingers.”

Luke reached his right hand around the left of my waist. I’m very ticklish, so I squirmed a bit. They both stifled giggles at this. When Luke was having difficulties with one hand, he tried two, wrapping his arms around my shirtless back. I fell over in discomfort.

“Pete!” Luke yelled. “Stop moving!” When the hilarity of the situation passed, my roommates became dire. “This is important!”

“Yeah, seriously. He needs to work on this!”

Luke finally got it a few times. When asked if he could do it just one more time, my answer was a firm “No.”

Scott and Luke were giggling as I sulked back to my room with my tail between my legs and humility between my gray matter. I fell asleep that night hoping that this story would never get out. Ever.