“I’m not fooling with you,” Benny said. “Your rep is that you’re soft. I was telling you to tell you.”
Connell knew what he was about to do might look crazy, but he did it anyway. He rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt. “You think this is soft?” he asked, flexing. Benny reached into his pocket and took out a switchblade.
“Tell me again you’re not soft,” Benny said quietly. “Tell me again.”
Connell stood there in silence.
“Tell me you tagged up.” There was menace in his voice. “Tell me, Connie.” Benny switched the blade out for a second and showed it to him, then popped it back in with the heel of his palm. He kept it in his hand.
“What do you want me to say?” Connell asked, his terror confusing his thoughts.
“Say, ‘I’m a *-ass * motherfucker.’?”
“I’m a *-ass *,” he said, and paused. He wasn’t comfortable saying that word. Benny laughed like he’d read his mind.
“Motherfucker!” Benny corrected. “Pussy-ass * motherfucker.”
“Pussy-ass *.”
Benny showed him the knife again. “Say it!”
“Motherfucker,” Connell said, his stomach tightening.
“Say the whole thing. ‘I’m a *-ass * motherfucker.’?”
“I’m a *-ass * motherfucker.”
Benny howled with laughter. “You want to take care of your rep, you better not go around telling people that!” He put the knife in his pocket. “Man—I wasn’t going to use this shit on you.” He motioned to push him, and Connell flinched. Benny laughed again. “You want to stay alive, you better not go around claiming someone else’s tag. They’ll end you. That’s it for today’s lesson.”
The whole way home, Connell replayed in his head what he’d said. I’m a *-ass. I’m a *-ass *. When he got there, his father was on the couch with the headphones on. Connell stood over him and watched him. He watched his hand going back and forth, the index finger raised. His father’s eyes were squeezed shut, as if he was trying to see something he needed absolute dark to see. When the dull murmur coming from the headphones rose to a crescendo, the upward thrusts of his arm lifted his body off the couch. When the symphony lulled, he lay there, eyes still squeezed shut, and his chest rose and fell with his breathing.
Connell dropped his bookbag on the dining room table and headed to the basement. He added a ten-pound plate to either side of the bar and then lay on the bench. Lift it, *-ass, he thought, but he couldn’t make it budge. He took the plates off and did a couple of sets of ten.
While he was lifting, he thought of something he could have said to Benny to make him laugh. When Benny asked, “What does it mean?” he could have said, “Pussy-Ass Virgin.” But he only ever thought of that kind of stuff after the fact. He even knew a French expression to describe coming up with witty things too late; that was the kind of * he was. His father had taught it to him: Esprit d’escalier, the spirit of the stairs; the thing you think of when you’re already gone. The kids who thought of snappy things on the spot never had to worry about being fat or smart or pussies. You had to have a little meanness in you to do it. You had to be willing to embarrass other people sometimes. He didn’t want to have to embarrass other people. Deep down, or not even that deep, he knew he was a *-ass; maybe that was why it hadn’t been that hard for him to say what he’d said to Benny.
Maybe it was partly his father’s fault that he was such a *-ass. His father was a nice guy. Not that he told Connell not to fight back. The last time Connell had come home with a swollen eye, his father had said, “You have my permission to fight back. You’re not going to get in trouble with me.” But Connell hadn’t wanted to risk it. He hadn’t wanted to get a JD card or suspended or worse. He’d been thinking of his permanent record. He hadn’t wanted to ruin his chances of getting into a good high school or having a good life. He’d needed the teachers on his side, the principal. He’d wanted to get out of the neighborhood. Well, now he was going to a fancy school in Manhattan on scholarship. You couldn’t get more out of the neighborhood than that. Maybe he was a total *-ass, but at least he wasn’t an asshole like Benny.
He put the plates back on. He thought, Lift it, motherfucker, and then he said it aloud, like he was uttering the password to a new club. He got the bar up once; it came crashing down with a loud bang. His father didn’t come running down to see whether he’d hurt himself, because his father couldn’t hear anything with those headphones on.
Pussy-ass *, he thought. Motherfucker.