Everything Is Wrong with Me (12 page)

But these fireworks, though awesome, were hard to come by. We only got see them on the Fourth of July when our parents lit them (we were never allowed to even get near them, let alone fire them off). Otherwise, we were fireworks-less 364 days a year. Until I met Henry.

The idea for the fireworks business was mine. Let’s be clear about that right away. David will tell you that he was the mastermind behind our enterprise, but that is simply not the truth. I won’t belittle his contributions to the business, because they were indeed significant, but it was my brainchild. All mine.

Now we can move forward.

After my parents’ divorce was finalized, my mom, brother, sister, and I moved back into our old house and my dad moved out. He bounced around a few different places before settling down in what had been his brother Mikey’s house. The house was on a street called Beulah Street, which at the time was not a nice part of the neighborhood. However, despite this, or perhaps more appropriately,
because of
this, the street was like a family. The good people of the block banded together to create a safer environment for their families, resulting in a true sense of community.

One of the members of this community was a guy named Henry, who lived across the street from my dad. A middle-aged Italian guy who smoked three packs a day, Henry delivered pizzas in the neighborhood for my favorite pizza place, Two Street Pizza. But Henry’s real passion was not pizza. It was fireworks—glorious, glorious fireworks. Shortly after my dad and Henry made acquaintances, no doubt having bonded over their mutual love of and admiration for Marlboro Reds, my dad took me over to Henry’s house and into his basement. I was around eleven at the time, young, impressionable, and always looking for new ways to hurt myself and/or get in trouble. And then I saw Henry’s basement.

The basement was filled with fireworks. And I mean
filled
in the most literal sense—there was not two square feet of space that wasn’t covered by some sort of fireworks. All I saw before me were mounds of mounds of packages, Chinese lettering, and crinkly red paper. Henry had all the normal fireworks that I enjoyed, but in quantities I had never seen before: cases of bricks of jumping jacks, firecrackers, Roman candles, and bottle rockets, stacked on top of each other, several rows deep. He walked carefully around the room, pointing out and explaining to me the fireworks that I was unfamiliar with. But I was too dazed to notice. I had found where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

These were the years that my dad was still feeling guilty about the divorce, so I walked out of Henry’s basement with more fireworks than I could carry—surely enough to last me for the next few months.

(I’d be back for more in a week.)

The next day, I took some of my fireworks around the Park, the concrete playground where my friends and I hung out at the corner of Second and Jackson. Once night fell, I pulled some of the jumping jacks out of my pocket and lit them with matches I had taken from my house. In that very instant, I transformed from “that nerdy kid who I hear kisses his hamster” to “Holy shit, that guy has fireworks!” Remember, we were just kids at this point, in only fourth or fifth grade. Fireworks are to fifth-graders what sex is to high school kids: mysterious, tantalizing, and terrifying. Also, highly addictive.

After the display was over, a display which consisted of me gingerly lighting single jumping jacks and throwing them as far away from me as possible so as not to get hurt, my friend Jimmy the Muppet came up to me.

“Yo, you got any more of them?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got some more at home, but I ain’t bringing them out.” The last thing I needed was for everyone to make a big deal over the fireworks. Don’t get me wrong—I liked the idea of the uptick in popularity that being the proud owner and displayer of fireworks would no doubt produce, but if my friends knew how many I had, they’d be hitting me up for free packs. And the older kids…forget about it. If they knew I was holding fireworks, I’d be beat up and picked on into oblivion and left without a single bottle rocket to my name. So I intended to ration them out, using only a pack here and there, and preferably when no older kids were around.

“I don’t want you to bring them out—I want to buy some off you.”

Jimmy and I snuck away from the crowd and I took him around to my house, where after promising him not to tell anyone how much I had, I sold him a pack of jumping jacks for seventy-five cents. Since I paid nothing for that pack, I made seventy-five cents straight profit. And it was right about here that the lightbulb went off.

I could sell these fireworks.

It would be really easy, too. I had more fireworks than I knew what to do with. I could keep them for personal use, but they were almost a burden. As I knew, my friends would constantly beg me for free packs, and the older kids would make sure that any cool fireworks I brought around the Park would be confiscated via wedgie. By selling them, I wouldn’t have to deal with this and could make some money. And if I was selling them, the older kids wouldn’t take them. Selling them was a way to legitimize the fact that I had them and portray myself as a businessman. The older kids could be dicks, but they weren’t about to
rob
me.

Yes, I could sell these fireworks.

And I could make a lot of money.

After all, no one else sold fireworks. Or rather, no other eleven-year-old sold fireworks. Maybe some adults sold them, but they surely wouldn’t sell them to kids, something I had no moral objection to doing, since
I
was a kid and all and these were my friends. One look at the jumping jacks or one thought of the potential destruction the firecrackers could cause and my friends would be desperate for more. How could they not be? And after that first taste, if they wanted more, they had to go through me, since I was the only game in town; without even realizing it, I had single-handedly cornered the market on illegal fireworks, with one bulk purchase from my supplier, Henry. I had the product, I was the only one with the product, and I was looking to liquefy.

Yes, I could sell these fireworks.

And yes, I could make a lot of money.

Holy crap.

But there was a problem: I was, for all intents and purposes, a shit dude. In the great social hierarchy of the neighborhood, while I wasn’t at the bottom of the barrel, I certainly wasn’t sitting at the top. I was not athletic, so I didn’t garner popularity in that way. I had no older siblings or cousins, so no one my age outside of my friends knew my name or my family. And I was a model student, getting good grades and never causing any trouble at school, so I wasn’t what teachers would call a “bad seed,” which was a surefire way to gain notoriety in the neighborhood. Thinking about this in terms of a business plan, I knew I had friends whom I could sell to, but outside my circle of a dozen friends and another dozen acquaintances, I was unknown. If I wanted my new business to be successful, I would need more costumers than just my closest friends. And I wasn’t popular enough to pull this off. I also figured that this illegal selling of fireworks would be hard work. My dad had bought me a lot of fireworks, and I would need help moving all of it. I
could
do it alone, but it would take up all my free time, time I needed for video games and listening to Guns N’ Roses, Bobby Brown, and Tone Loc.
*
In short, I needed to take on a partner. And so I turned to my best friend David.

David is one of my oldest friends. Whenever we go drinking together today, if our level of intoxication is firmly in the “beer-soaked nostalgia” zone, we reminisce about his birthday party in first grade when I bought him a Big John Studd WWF wrestling figure—one of the thick rubber ones that I was immediately reminded of many years later when, for the first time, I stuck a dildo into a stripper at a friend’s bachelor party—when he already had one, committing my first of many future party fouls. Back then, David was a small kid with giant ears but with street smarts to rival the older kids. Though we were both similar in our ability to BS people, David had a significant advantage where I didn’t: older relatives. He had an older sister who hung around with the “older heads” (guys a few years older than us), as well as an older cousin who was a tough dude. Therefore David had immunity from getting picked on. Add in the fact that he played basketball very well and was known on many corners of Second Street because of this, and the choice was easy.

David was, in essence, the ideal partner for this business venture. Since he was small, quick, well-known, and well protected, he would be the runner/front man for the operation. The face of the business, he’d take care of the grunt work, being out on the street, taking orders, getting paid, driving his bike around with a backpack full of fireworks at all times. I, on the other hand, would be the Kingpin. Since I was larger, slower, less well-known, and much less protected, I would be the brains behind the operation. It would be my job to work the books, keeping track of all the orders and monies, while running the show from behind the curtain. The other reason this role was suitable to me was that should anything “go down,” David would be the one taking the fall. I could easily get rid of notebooks that kept the names and corners of the customers. I could also get rid of the stash of fireworks that was hidden most excellently under my bed. If anything were to happen, I would get away scot-free, unless David ratted me out, which of course he would never do.
*

We divided the partnership 75-25. The reason for the imbalance was simple: he needed me much more than I needed him. And there was the whole matter of how my dad bought the fireworks. We were running on profits because of his money. But David, like myself, had an enterprising spirit and so didn’t put up an argument, as he was interested only in getting involved in a scheme.
**

In less than a week, we ran through the $60 worth of fireworks my dad had first bought and made an astounding $140. Since we spent nothing, that was $140 in pure profit, $35 to David and $105 to me. Make no mistake, $105 for an eleven-year-old is an ungodly shitload of money. I was, for all intents and purposes, fucking filthy rich. Once David and I started making money, just like our customers who were purchasing our fireworks, we were hooked. Having spending money, enough to buy whatever struck our fancy (mostly slices of pizza and sodas), meant that David and I became instantly cool. David had been popular before, but for me this taste of fame was new and tantalizing. I had gone from the nerd who had won the spelling bee and cried when he finished second in the geography bee to the Guy Behind the Guy, Mr. Fireworks himself, the one who was so cool that he dealt not with his buddies—that job belonged to David, my assistant—but presumably with the adults and/or gangsters who sold him the fireworks. Word spread like wildfire through the neighborhood that Mulgrew and Floody were selling fireworks, and soon David was driving his bike as far away as Second and Reed to sell to some friends of friends up there. Business was booming (pun entirely intended).

But there was a problem. We were out of the goods and needed more. This presented a major bump in the road. I knew I couldn’t ask my dad to buy me more fireworks. The paying part was not the problem, since David and I now had money and were willing to invest it. It was my dad’s permission that would be difficult to get. I could only manipulate the postdivorce guilt so much, and telling him that I already went through $60 worth of fireworks in a week and needed more might raise some suspicions.

I realized that I’d have to go straight to Henry. I didn’t know much about Henry, but he seemed like a nice guy. And he seemed…trusting, good-hearted. The only other thing I knew about Henry was that he smoked like a goddamn chimney. I thought my dad was bad with his two-pack-a-day habit, but this guy made my father look like a fourteen-year-old girl catching a smoke after geometry class. This was all I had to work with on Henry as I devised a strategy to get more product to keep the business going.

Finally, I had it. The following Saturday, David would follow me up to my dad’s street, when I knew my dad was at work. Henry would be sitting on his porch, smoking a cigarette, like he always did. I’d act like I was dropping off something at my dad’s house, but stop by to say hello. I’d tell him also that I had bought him a gift to thank him for the fireworks, a pack of Marlboro Reds. Henry, softened by my act of generosity, would then not bat an eyelash when I asked if, since I was here and all, I might be able to buy some more fireworks.

I realize that it might seem odd for an eleven-year-old to be gifting a pack of cigarettes to a fifty-year-old man, but at the time I saw nothing wrong with it. My friends were just starting to smoke at my age and I had been buying cigarettes for my dad since I was old enough to walk to the store alone. So buying a pack of cigarettes for an older guy wasn’t a big deal. Hell, every year for his birthday, from the age of eight until high school, I used to buy my dad a carton of cigarettes—until I realized that I was helping him to slowly kill himself and that was probably a bad thing.

David waited around the corner and I headed up the block where, sure enough, Henry was on the porch having a smoke. “Hey, Henry.”

“Oh—hey, Jason.” He sat up from his reclined position and put out his cigarette. My dad did the same thing whenever he greeted someone. He sat up, put out his cigarette, and said hello. Then Henry, like my dad did, immediately lit another one. Why didn’t he just put the first down? Wasn’t that wasteful? “What are you up to?”

“I was just gonna drop some stuff off at my dad’s, but I’m glad I saw you.” I reached into the brown bag I was carrying. “I brought you something to say thanks for the fireworks.” I handed him the pack of Reds.

Henry smiled. “Well, ain’t that nice. That’s nice. I’ll have to tell your father about that.”

Crap. I hadn’t prepared for that. My dad knowing that I was here would seriously ruin my plot. But it was too late to turn back now. If I stopped or stumbled, the whole plan would fall apart.