PARAMUS SMOKE - 1982

Weed… cannabis… Mary Jane… marijuana… pot… chronic… reefer… ganja… dope… grass… doobie… keef… sensimelia… boom… skunk… herb… Aunt Mary… Acapulco Gold… Hawaiian… Alice B. Toklas… Christmas Tree… Texas Tea… Maui Wowy … stick… Tijuana… Panama Red… cheeba… it’s all the same thing.

And it can take me from uncontrollable laughter to paranoia in the instant that it takes to think of something… like crashing the car into the K-Rail or getting stopped by the New York Police Department (Why doesn’t he pass?). Often it makes me ponder things like how arbitrary aneurisms are.

Sometimes it allows me to feel inside my organs, like it did on the otherwise normally calm evening of August 26, 1982 when suddenly it crept into my viscera and gave me a heart attack. Now, wait a second, you’re thinking… you’re not dead. No, no I’m not… and in fact, I’ve never had a heart attack either. But I was primed to think I was, not just from the marijuana, but because my grandmother, her brother, her mother, and her grandfather had all died from heart attacks. It was a family tradition. My first bout of angina came when I was ten. Okay, it may have been heartburn. But I couldn’t be sure.

And even though those last few precious moments of my time on earth somehow lasted eleven more years, on August 26, 1982, I smoked the straw that broke the camel’s back… well; the doobie that broke the camel’s back.

Let me set the night up for you. I had been up for more than 24 hours having flown back from six weeks in Europe the night before. It would have been logical to stay in and get some rest, but I was 20 years old and my friends wanted to go into the City to see Pink Floyd’s THE WALL, and no 20 year old is going to say no to going into the City with their friends ever, even if it's just to see Bob Geldorf shave his eyebrows off.

I was steering my Plymouth Sapporo down the Henry Hudson Parkway, with Mitch I Steal My Friends’ Clothes Lindenbaum riding shotgun. In the back seat was Bobbie You Guys Want To Leave Yet Lifshitz. Mitch was wearing a shirt of mine. Bobbie was rolling a joint from a Ziploc filled with Hawaiian.

Now, Mitch I Steal My Friends’ Clothes Lindenbaum was one of the happiest people I ever knew. He was the kind of guy who would come over to my house to help me mow the lawn. He didn't need to be entertained. He enjoyed being with people. The only problem with this was that he would take clothes from my closet.. He didn't even do this in secret. He'd stand there and say, "Nice velour V-neck. Try not letting me have it." And then it was gone, until I saw him wearing it the next time we were together.

On the other hand, Bobbie You Guys Want To Leave Yet Lifshitz was completely miserable. He was always looking for the next thrill and viewed wherever he was as the most boring place in the world; even if there were girls, and free bottles of Southern Comfort and Jack Daniels. I mean, if you went with Bobbie to see Led Zeppelin at the Playboy Club, and your seats were with the starting lineup of the 1973 New York Mets, and the food was catered by the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr himself, Bobbie would turn to you within ten minutes of your arrival and ask, "You ready to leave?"

But on this night Bobbie was happy because he was on his way somewhere. And Mitch was happy because he was Mitch and wearing Bobbie’s jeans. And I was happy because I was with my friends on the way into the City while using my lungs to fill the Plymouth with blue doobie smoke.

Mitch took smooth, silent drags. Bobbie and I sounded like the hose on the vacuum cleaner when you switch cleaning tools with the vacuum still running.

“Driving drunk is bogus,” Bobbie decided it was time to point out.

“But driving stoned,” I responded, “Is cool.”

“Totally,” Mitch said. “Weed does not effect your driving.”

“No,” I answered, “But it does sort of make the consequences of smashing into something not seem so important.”

“What word do people say most when smoking pot?” Bobbie asked.

“Ear,” Mitch said, passing me the doobie.

I started to feel static electricity and pressure in my chest. I was spinning. I probably would have been okay had I just taken a deep breath and kept driving, but instead I concentrated on my chest to try and make the spinning and pressure go away… even though I was high… on Hawaiian.

Let me stop for a minute and ask you a question. Have you ever thought about your breathing? Tried to figure out how it works? Then, because you are thinking about your breathing, you realize that you can’t breathe anymore? You start to panic that you don’t know how to breathe? Okay… imagine doing that stoned. Imagine doing that stoned on Hawaiian. Imagine being stoned on Hawaiian, and trying to figure out how you make your heart pump. Imagine being stoned on Hawaiian and trying to figure out how to make your heart pump when you have a family history of sudden death from heart attacks.

“Guys, I don’t mean to sound stupid, but I think I’m having a heart attack,” I sputtered out.

Mitch and Bobbie both cracked up.

“I’m serious, guys.”

This caused them both to roll with waves of laughter, while they each pounded on me in some sadistic version of saying thanks for the laugh.

“No, you don’t understand… You have to take me to the hospital.”

“But we might miss the movie.” someone uttered.

”One of you has to drive,” I wept.

“It’s a stick,” Mitch answered.

“I can’t drive a stick,” Bobbie said.

“Me either,” Mitch responded.

“One of you has to. I can’t drive.”

“Bobbie’s cousin has a stick …,” Mitch offered.

“Chuckie, you better really be having a fucking heart attack because this is bogus,” Bobbie said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

As soon as we jerked back onto the Henry Hudson, I knew that letting Bobbie drive was a mistake as he ground the gears and hurled us both into the windshield. Meanwhile, the feeling in my chest was getting stronger, making it hard to catch my breath. I begged, begged, begged them to wave down a cop. Mitch felt this wasn’t a good idea because he had a half pound of Hawaiian in the glove compartment. I told him to throw the bag out the window and flag down a cop before I died. He ignored this instruction.

The sensation grew more powerful, pounding against my ribs and solar plexus. Suddenly, I could map my nervous system from the throbbing line of neurons firing into my left arm and along my chin.

None of us knew Manhattan, and because of this, none of us knew where to look for a hospital. Bobbie stripped the shit out of my clutch, as he jerked along side a cab, “Where the fuck is a hospital?” The cabbie, who didn’t know Manhattan either, pointed at a bodega and said ask them. Lindenbaum ran in and then rushed back. “In the fifties,” he shouted at Bobbie.

“Where in the fifties?”

“Fuck, I have to go back.”

“No, let’s just go. We’ll find it.”

“Shit… Chuckie’s dying.”

We drove like a yoyo down 56th Street, up 55th Street, down 54th Street, up 53rd Street and finally down 52nd Street, where we found St. Clare’s Hospital Emergency Room. Bobbie went to park the car, while Mitch and I went in. The nurses were sitting around. One asked me, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “This may sound stupid, but…I’m having a heart attack.”

Her expression shifted slightly and she took my pulse. Next thing I knew, I was in a wheelchair, being wheeled into the examination room. Two nurses in pink scrubs where joined by two doctors in blue scrubs, all checking parts of me.

“What seems to be the problem?” one of them asked and I had to say the words again… making the whole thing all the more real…. “I might be having a heart attack.”

When I looked up again, there were now two more nurses in yellow scrubs, and two others in purple scrubs, and ten interns in white jackets. I felt like I was being attended to by two rolls of LifeSavers: fruit flavored and peppermint. They all looked at me with deep concern. The head life saver asked me if I had taken any drugs. His 19 flavors of helpers all looked at me. I thought about it for an instant. Do I tell the truth and save my life, or lie and not get in trouble?

“A little, tiny, little bit of a marijuana cigarette,” I answered. I felt very proud of myself for choosing to be saved, even if it meant being arrested and thrown into jail.

The head life saver laid me back on the bed. Vaseline and electrodes were applied to my chest, back, neck and legs, as the rest of the LifeSavers worked on me. Mitch I Steal My Friends Clothes Lindenbaum told me later that he hadn’t thought anything was really wrong until he looked into the examination room and saw the rainbow of 20 frantic medical personnel working all over me. I yelled out to call my parents and tell them that I loved them and how I’d died. The nurses watched the EKG. The interns watched the nurses. The doctors watched the nurses. No one was leaving, and I just knew that this was bad. They would have walked away if this wasn’t bad.

Finally, the head life saver tore the EKG from the machine and said, “You’re not having a heart attack.” I looked for Mitch to tell him to cancel the call to my parents, but he was gone.

A nurse gave me Valium. The sweating, the pressure on my chest, the throbbing line of nerves into my arm and chin, and the spinning all stopped. They gave me some papers to fill out and told me I could go. I asked Mitch if we were still going to see Pink Floyd’s THE WALL, but he said we’d already missed the trailers, so there was no reason to try.

Bobbie got the hang of the stick and drove us home. My parents stood on the front stoop, waiting for me. It was sort of awkward. I mean, how exactly do you explain to your parents that you just spent $500 of their money on an emergency room visit because you were smoking pot? I tried to sneak past them… but my mom stopped me and hugged me while my dad looked like he would have hugged me if he just hadn’t been born part WASP, and hoping that I understood being part WASP myself.

Funny thing is it was that very WASP part of my dad and me that liked to drop dead young. In a coincidence that I could not make up, my dad told me that he’d been to St. Clare’s Hospital himself, as a child to visit his grandmother when she was admitted with chest pain.

“But that won’t happen to us,” he assured me… at least that’s what I think I remember.

Seven years later, my dad dropped dead from a heart attack.

When I flew home for the funeral, Mitch Lindenbaum came over to hang out. He was wearing my shirt. He told me that no one knew where Bobbie was. I told him that Bobbie had actually shown up at my apartment in Los Angeles once, got a job at CAA, and then quit the next day. That had been the last I’d ever heard from him. Mitch told me that he had a tree planted in Israel in memory of my dad… in memory of my dad the WASP… the WASP with the sad expression on his face as if he wished he could be warm and loving… warm and loving like the Jews he knew.

But back to 1982: that next night, Bobbie You Guys Want To Leave Yet Lifshitz, Mitch I Steal My Friends’ Clothes Lindenbaum and I did get to see Pink Floyd’s The Wall at the Warner Cinerama Twin in New York City. Bobbie wanted to leave, but we made him stay. The movie was about searching for reason in a world in which all we know is that each of us has our own expiration date. And I realized then that, that is why God, or Mother Nature, or whatever force is up there gives us things like Hawaiian Weed, nights in the City, friends like Mitch and Bobbie, the 1973 New York Mets, moms who hug us after we do something stupid and dads who wish they knew how to hug us. These trinkets are God’s, Mother Nature’s, or whatever’s way of saying, “sorry, sorry I didn’t work out that death thing very well. Here… have a LifeSavers. Take a cherry one. It’ll make you feel better.”

UPSIDE DOWN - 1969

I was in second grade, in Mrs. Valerio’s class. All the kids were lined up to go to an assembly in the gym. The girls were up front, up by the door with Mrs. Valerio. The boys were in the back. I was talking to Donnie Maplewood, the new kid, about how different our school was from his old school. Donnie Baker was behind me.

Then, I was floating in air. I couldn’t figure out where the floor had gone or where the floor was. It was a terrible feeling, as if the Earth itself had suddenly vanished. I couldn’t even tell if my head was up or my feet were up. Within no time at all, I heard a loud crack. The crack was intense, like an explosion, and it didn’t come from in front of me or behind me or to the left of me or to the right of me. The cracking explosion came from inside me. It was inside my head. There were thousands of lights, orange, red, blue, yellow, all flaming and flashing in the darkness of my mind. The pain was so intense that my head went numb. I knew it must hurt terribly, but I couldn’t feel it. When I managed to open my eyes, I was in on the floor of my second grade class. There were feet where the other kids should be: feet in Keds, feet in P.F. Flyers, feet in Hush Puppies and feet in Buster Browns, all around me. Everyone was very high up, above me. And they were all laughing, except Eric Nixon, who was standing behind Donnie Baker.

“He didn’t even see that coming,” he told Donnie Baker. I wondered what it was that didn’t I see coming? What had happened? A cool blackness started to run over my eyes and then suddenly, it was a full minute later. A minute of my life had vanished without me experiencing it.

Mrs. Valerio was kneeling over me and everyone was asking what happened. Donnie Maplewood was looking the other way, like he didn’t want to say. Donnie Baker was trying not to giggle. Eric Nixon was saying, “Donnie, picked him up and dropped him on his head.” Then Donnie Baker looked at Eric Nixon in a bad way. Mrs. Valerio asked if I could stand up. I thought, wow, I don’t know. Can I stand up? She gave me her hand to help. She had a very nice hand. I stood up and I felt like the blackness was coming again, it was oozing like syrup over my vision. Mrs. Valerio told one of the girls to go to the nurse’s office to get smelling salts. I didn’t want that, no…so I forced the blackness away and we all walked to the assembly.

And that’s all I remember about that.

MY MOM CALLED THE POLICE ON OUR CAT - 1970



When I was nine my mom called the police on our cat. But this was not unexpected; she always went to extraordinary lengths to protect us from the world. You know, from evil things, like Crest Toothpaste with Fluoride. We were Colgate with MFP children who were not allowed to use, taste or get close to Crest—because mixing toothpastes makes poison.

Fresh off the boat from Iran, my mom graduated number one from her American high school and from her American college. An artist, poet, book author and teacher – she boiled ground beef after cooking it, to wash away the grease. Ours was the only house on Veraa Place where you could get—boiled hamburger. She bought chicken-loaf, ham and roast beef at our local delicatessen, Komsa Farms then cut out all the fat, so that our cold cuts looked like paper snow flakes. She told my brother and me never to go under the television table because, "It could come down on us.” Now, to me, come down meant a slow evil descent, rather than crashing, and I was scared of the television table, which I thought was sentient and waiting for someone to crush. One day, our cat Silverbell went under it and I cried, thinking this was her end.

Luckily, the table never got Silverbell. Sadly, our oven did. My mom was making turkey and checking the temperature for the 12th time, because if it wasn’t exactly 450 degrees—you would die from eating it. Silverbell went out of her mind at the smell of the roasting turkey, jumped on the open oven door, which was exactly 450 degrees, screamed and ran out the back, never to be seen again.

Two years later, on a cold fall day we got another cat. My mom took my brother and me to visit a family with two pregnant women. One of the women was my mom’s student, a teenage girl, and the other woman was her mom. They had a dog and a cat, and because both women were having babies, they were giving away the cat, who was named Charley. He was a furry dark grey Tom, almost black, with a white bib that ran down to his belly. He ate food from the dog dish until he was shooed away and scrambled onto the kitchen counter to eat cat food. The older woman put cans of cat food into a bag and told my mom to feed Charley a quarter of a can a day.

At our house, my mom opened a can and scooped out a quarter, putting it on a paper plate on the floor. Charley ran up from exploring and gulped it down in a single swallow. He looked up at my mom. She said that was all for today.

When my dad, Charley, came home, there was a brief discussion about changing the cat’s name so it wouldn’t be confused with me, also Charley…but I said I didn’t mind sharing a name with my new best friend.

On the next day, my mom took the can of cat food out of the refrigerator and plopped a quarter of it on a paper plate. Charley ate this instantly and looked up at her. “That’s all for today,” she said. She was following the rules we’d been given.

As the cat napped on the living room rug, my mom pulled out a pad and some charcoals and sketched a picture of him. While she drew, she told my brother and me about her pet lamb. When she was a little a girl in Tabriz, Iran, her father had brought home a lamb, which my mom and her brothers played with in the garden. My mom said that because they ate lamb for dinner every night, she didn’t know exactly when they ate her lamb, she just knew that one day it was gone.

I hugged Charley as tightly as I could. No one would ever eat him. By the by, bit of advice, cats don’t enjoy hugging.

As the weeks passed, my mom gave Charley a quarter of a can every day. He’d eat it so fast he’d nearly vacuum the paper plate up with it. Slowly, he began to get aggressive about joining us for breakfast, lunch and dinner, jumping on the table and stealing food. My mom put him out while we ate, but Charley lurked on our back porch like a panther on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

One dinner, I saw a face in the backdoor window. I screamed. It had only been there for a second, but a monster had been looking in. My mom, my dad and my brother all turned to look and sure enough, there was the face again. It was Charley and he was jumping up to the height of the four-foot high window so that he could watch us eat. With each leap, he mimed a meow, silently begging on his descent, “For God’s sake, feed me!”

And yet, because we had been told that the cat only ate a quarter of a can a day, that was what we fed him. It never occurred to any of us that at his old house he also had a large plate of dog food in the kitchen, so a quarter can of cat food was his snack.

Thanksgiving my mom made turkey. As she had to check the temperature to make sure it was exactly 450 degrees, Charley was banished to the porch for his own safety. When the aroma began to fill the air, Charley began to jump so that he could see in through the backdoor window. He looked so sad, jumping higher than he had ever jumped before, miming a meow at the top of each and every bound. I went out to comfort him.

I picked him up and carried him over to our outdoors [sic] couch. I hugged him in hope that a little love would take his mind off the turkey. I was Jim Fowler out in the field with the wildlife, reporting back to Marlin Perkins in the studio.

It was then that Charley, not wanting to be held away from the turkey aroma, growled a warning. This was a new sound that I had never heard him make before. Then for the first time ever, this gentle cat who had never hurt one of us, scratched me.

I ran into the house, crying. My dad didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading, but my mom…my mom, well, she quickly achieved a level of panic that I had never seen before. She studied the scratch on my arm and wailed, “Ohmygod, a rabies bite…ohymygod, a rabies bite.”

She made my dad put Charley in the garage, while she dialed the phone number we had on stickers on both phone in the house, 262-3400, the Paramus Police… Now, I was scared. This was bad. My mom was calling the police. Still, Charley deserved to get in trouble. And, I felt safe, knowing my mom loved me and was going to make sure that he was punished for his crime. Frantically, my mom told the police that I had been bitten by a cat, which they had captured in the garage. The word rabies came out of my mom’s mouth at least six times.

Five minutes later, a white and blue Paramus Police cruiser whipped down Veraa Place. It had its siren on and its cherry top turned our whole neighborhood into a red disco. The policeman, with his police jacket and police walkie-talkie and police baton and police revolver and police belt with three full rows of police bullets in their individual police loops on the belt, came into the house and asked, “Where is the animal?”

My dad said he had something to do in the basement, and left. My mom and I led the policeman through our laundry room and into the threshold of the garage. The policeman took his police flashlight and aimed it into the cold depths. The leather of the policeman’s jacket made leather noises. Night had fallen and there was nothing but dark silence. I could see my breath. Charley was crouched far from us against the garage door. His green eyes reflected wildly against the police flashlight beam. He mimed a meow. The policeman explained to my mom that they would have to cage the animal and watch it for a week to test for rabies. It clearly wasn’t foaming at the mouth or acting strangely, but with a wild cat, it was hard to tell.

“Let me see your bite,” he said. I showed him my arm. He said my bite was a scratch and he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think you could get rabies from a scratch, especially seeing as this one hadn’t broken the skin. He asked my mom if we had ever seen the cat before. “Charley is our cat” she responded.

The policeman made a face. He put his flashlight away, told my mom to put some Bactine on my scratch and because it was our cat, it would be best if my mom watched him for the week.

Charley lived in our garage for the next seven days, while my mom checked for foam at his mouth. When the week was up and she was sure he didn’t have rabies, she drove him to his old owners and gave him back. On his first day there, he jumped up on the kitchen countertop and appropriated a leg of lamb; dragging it into the backyard with his teeth.

Ten years later, I took the train home from work one summer evening and called for a ride from the station payphone. I heard the line ring twice, be picked up and then fall to the floor. First thought I had was, Oh God, my mom just died before she could say hello. I ran up the hill towards my house, only to see my mom waiting for me in her car. I yelled, “Someone answered the phone at our house and dropped the receiver.” My mom blanched and said no one was home. We raced back to the house and found the receiver on the floor. “Call the police; someone’s here” I yelled. My mom ran to a neighbor and dialed 262-3400. Two cruisers came this time with their cherry tops strobing into every house on Veraa Place, and two officers jumped out. Both unsnapped the leather straps that locked their pistols in place. They searched for the intruder who had answered the phone, but all they found was our new cat, Toni, cowering in the bedroom. It was then that I noticed sticking to the sticker with the Paramus Police number on the phone—fresh cat hair. Toni had knocked the phone off the hook. Sure enough, once again, we had called the police on our cat. And this time, I was the one who panicked and forced the call. I truly was and am my mother’s son.

THREE CARS FOR THREE CHEERLEADERS - 1980

I applied for a freshman year Federally Insured Student Loan, or FISL, two weeks before freshman year was over, and with all of my tuition, books, meals and dormitory expenses paid for months earlier from money my dad inherited from Aunt Blanche.

I applied for a sophomore year FISL the next day with all my sophomore year expenses already allotted for from Aunt Blanche’s largess too.

Soon, I had $5,000 in FISL money; so I did what any responsible 18-year-old in my situation would do…

I bought a used Buick – a 1978 Regal Limited with a waterfall grill, whitewalls, and crushed-velour pillow seats.

My decision may have been morally questionable, but being car-less at college was being date-less at college… and because the FISL was for college, and college meant living in dorms full of young women waiting to be asked out on dates, and having a car would make asking them out so much easier, I figured I was doing the right thing buying the used Buick.

I spent that entire summer break visiting the Sears Automotive Center, polishing and pampering the car, hanging a little evergreen air-freshener tree from the rearview mirror, and putting Armor-All over every thing resembling leather, all in preparation for sophomore year.

Just before school began again, my family and I planned a week down the shore in Wildwood Crest. But, the morning we were to leave I slept through my dad’s dozen and a half attempts to wake me up. Finally, through the stupor of my sleep, I heard him say “Fine, drive yourself.” When I woke up four hours later I found directions to the motel, a ham sandwich and an apple left for me on the dining room table.

I packed some clothes in a Glad garbage bag and hit the road, cranking the radio, blasting Holme’s “Garden State Parkway Boogie.” “When the weather gets great in the Garden State, everyone heads for the shore… Doing the Boogie, the Garden State Parkway Boogie, yeah.”

As I reached the Raritan River Bridges, I cracked the window to smell the ocean. Then, I saw a glint on the pavement. Remembering the lesson in driving class that it’s better to run over something small than swerve into something big, I rode over it.

BOOM – it banged against the undercarriage, at my foot. BOOM – it banged again, under the trunk. ROAR – the car screamed like a jet plane. My muffler was punctured.

Now, most people would have stopped for help, but I was 18, so I kept driving, with every other passerby yelling out, “You need a muffler.” “Thanks,” I mouthed, waving back. But I was making good time, and though the roar seemed to get louder and louder, the Regal sailed down the Parkway like on glass… very fast glass. I looked at the speedometer and saw that I was doing 100. I yanked my foot off of the gas but the car accelerated to 110.

Braking didn’t help, so I downshifted to first. But the safety on the transmission wouldn’t change gears because of my speed. So I stomped on the parking brake. This slowed the wheels enough that the safety on the transmission disengaged and the car downshifted at about 50 miles an hour, launching me into the windshield and retarding the wheels enough that the parking brake locked them up, which put the car in a full 360 spin, on the Garden State Parkway, the second heaviest artery in the most densely populated state in the Union.

Miraculously still alive and unhurt, I figured out that I could drive the car by keeping it in second and using the brake pedal to adjust my speed. I got off and found the first garage, where a mechanic put my sweet, cuddly, pretty, little Buick Regal on the lift and said that I’d bent my linkage. He did a little bit of work so that I could sort of drive again, but told me that the leak in the muffler would poison me with carbon monoxide pretty soon, so I probably shouldn’t drive the car that much.

It was like a gut punch. My Regal… my girl tool, wounded by a piece of who knows what? I drove back to the Garden State Parkway on ramp unsure if I would get on heading home or get on heading down the shore. Somehow, even though I was 18, common sense took over and I headed home.

I drove home praying that I’d be able to afford the repairs and wondering how I would ever get a girlfriend, let alone a cheerleader without the Regal. I nursed her to Midland Gulf, which was closed. I put a note on the windshield for Ed the mechanic, saying that I’d be back with the keys when they opened on Monday morning. I started on the shortcut back to my house, cutting through people’s yards like I used to when I was a kid, when all of a sudden, a middle-aged man jumped out of his house and shouted at me. I turned around and ran back to the sidewalk, taking the long way home, dreading telling my dad what had happened and hearing him tell me off for destroying the car.

It was Saturday night and I had nothing to do. I called Rappaport, my best friend who’d been working hard on making me the kind of guy who would get a girlfriend, taking me shopping for velour sweaters, getting me to listen to Led Zeppelin, and taking me to parties where kids knew how to dance like John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. “Come over,” he said, “I’ll call around and see who’s having a party.”

I told him the bad news, and that I’d be coming in my brother’s 1971 Ford Torino… a car that used to be mine… a car that Rappaport and I had both agreed was cool for hanging in… it did zero to sixty in eight-point-two seconds… but which would never attract a cheerleader, being huge, olive green, and sort of rusty.

On the way to Rappaport, doing 70 in a 25 MPH zone, I slammed on the brakes when the light at Farview changed from yellow to red without warning. For the second time in a day, I needed a protractor to measure my forward progress, as I did a 90 degree turn with all four wheels locked. The motor stuttered, sort of like the death rattle that I’d seen my grandmother’s silver tabby Brandy make just before she lay down and stopped breathing. And like Brandy, the Torino wouldn’t start again no matter how many times I tried.

I got out, pushed the crippled behemoth to the curb and walked home. Half an hour later, I met the Triple A driver at Midland Gulf. He had my brother’s Torino in tow and with the dexterity of a hall-of-fame wrecker driver; slipped the Torino into the narrow space between my Regal and a concrete wall. I left a note on my brother’s car for Ed the mechanic, explaining that I would come back with the keys to it on Monday morning. As an aside, Ed later told me that I jumped the timing chain in the Torino, which was impossible, because in order to generate the lateral force necessary to do that, I had to have been going 120 miles an hour when I hit a brick wall.

Once again, I started to cut through yards to get home, but when I saw the man who shouted at me, I made a quick U-turn to the sidewalk, while dreading telling my dad what had happened and hearing him tell me off for destroying two cars.

When I got home, I got the keys to my dad’s 1973 Plymouth Valiant and started it up. If you don’t know the Valiant, it was a box on four wheels. The headlights and grill looked like a perpetually smiling face – like a Christian Science usher at Sunday Morning services. My dad’s Valiant was nearing 200,000 miles and had old pillows stuffed into the springs in the holes in the front seat. If the Regal was a girl tool, and the Torino was a hanging out ride, the Valiant was an “I’m a nerd with no hope of ever talking to a cheerleader as long as I live piece of crap.” But it was all I had.

As I drove to Rappaport, I threw my dad’s old papers, boots, umbrellas and coffee cups from the front seat to the back seat. When I looked forward again black smoke was gushing from under the hood. For the life of me, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but there was no denying that smoke was billowing from the power steering. Other people on the street yelled out, “Your car’s on fire.” Well it wasn’t really on fire. It was just smoldering.

I was too embarrassed to call Triple A again, so I drove the smoking Valiant to Midland Gulf myself. I wedged it in front of the Regal and Torino, opened the hood and poured water over the power steering motor. I put a note on the windshield to Ed that I would be back on Monday morning with the keys to the Valiant.

I walked home on the sidewalk, which took twice as long as cutting through people’s yards. I dreaded telling my dad what had happened and hearing him tell me off for destroying three cars. God had gotten me back for using my FISL to buy the Regal.

“Chuckeee…” Rappaport said when I got on the phone with him, “I’ve got even worse news. There are no parties anywhere tonight.” I tried not to let him hear the tears in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. In three hours I’d destroyed three cars. I was in huge trouble when my parents got home. I didn’t have the money to fix any of the cars. My FISL was all gone. I was a loser. A loser, who was never going to get a girlfriend, let alone a cheerleader. Then Rappaport had an idea. We’d have a party at my house, with girls, lots of girls.

Two hours later, there were five guys at my house. They were drinking beer and singing along with Billy Joel’s album 52ND STREET. Finally, a knock came on the door. It was three… more guys. Then the doorbell rang again; it was two… more guys. We all stared at each other. The door swung open again. It was a guy who had a girl’s name sort of. I had 11 guys in my house and no car.

We danced like lunatics, jumping up and down to the music, “You had to be a big shot, did’ya...” When the door opened again, it was Big Red with more beer. The 12 of us bounced across my living room like we were on pogo sticks; gold chains and feathered haircuts flying everywhere, pounding to the beat of Billy Joel. I may have been a loser, but I wasn’t alone.

Then the doorbell rang – I walked over to it unenthusiastically and swung the door open. Suddenly my skin cooled, my capillaries slammed shut and my breath got lost in my lungs. I stood at the threshold of one of those moments in life when life is forever changed – when the road itself turns, rather than my having to turn myself. Standing on my stoop were three… varsity cheerleaders from Paramus High School, including the cheerleading captain.

They were beautiful. They smiled as if they had been trained in the art of smiling cutely. They had perfect teeth and perfect complexions. They burst through the door and kissed the cheeks of the boys they knew, while bobbing their heads to the sound of Billy Joel.

Rappaport gave me a high five and said, “Chuckee… it’s God’s present for his messing up your cars… God’s giving you three cheerleaders for the three cars.”

I ran to my room and got a camera. I took a picture of the three cheerleaders sitting at my parents’ dining room table. All of life is temporary sure, but moments like this were just a flicker… the single flash of a lightening bug, and I knew I had to record it to remind myself that it had actually happened. Then Rappaport grabbed me and sat me down with him and the three girls. He told them all about the three cars and how I’d had the worst day of my life. One of the girls asked what they could do to make me feel better. Rappaport answered, “Chuckee needs a girlfriend.”

BOOM, I felt my heart pound against my chest. BOOM, I felt my heart pound against my skull. My stomach did a 90 degree turn. My scalp began to smolder.

“Chuckee could get a girlfriend in a second if he just tried,” one of the cheerleaders said. I took another picture of her. This was a moment I had to remember forever. And it was then that I realized that God or not, the Regal had worked. The Regal, through whatever indirect means it chose to do it, had put three cheerleaders at the same dining room table on which I used to sit pretending to fly an airplane. The Regal had taken a bullet for me. Damn, I was going to do whatever I had to save that car.

As the night went on, more kids arrived and other kids left, but the three cheerleaders stayed put at my dining room table, asking me questions about college and, when I made them laugh, brushing their fingers against the top of my hand. I felt each touch in my spine.

And when the party finally came to an end, the three cheerleaders stayed and helped Rappaport and me clean the house so I wouldn’t get in trouble with my parents. One washed glasses in the sink. One vacuumed. One picked up trash and beer bottles. I wish, wish, wish I had had the nerve to photograph that – I etched it into my memory instead.

On Monday morning I woke up at 3:30 in the afternoon. I walked over to Midland Gulf, where Ed had moved the Torino into the garage, moved the Valiant into the Regal’s spot and moved the Regal into the Torino’s spot, all without keys. All three had their hoods up and he had to order parts for them, which was going to cost a bundle. “I hope your dad doesn’t get mad,” he said.

I nodded, self-assuredly, the sort of nod that a guy who hangs out with cheerleaders has, the kind of nod that says, “whatever… that’s life… everything will work out.” Because the truth of the matter was that is who I was. I gave the Regal a pat on the fender and then headed back home for breakfast, cutting through people’s yards like I used to when I was a kid, and didn’t get yelled at once. People don’t yell at guys who hang out with cheerleaders.