Everything Is Wrong with Me (5 page)

Which type of Mummer you are and which Mummers club you belong to is largely hereditary. While switching clubs is not uncommon, many choose to stay in the club they were born into, embracing an identity forged by a previous generation. I go out with Froggy Carr, a Comics club, because my father went out with Froggy Carr. When I have a (legitimate) son, he will go out with Froggy Carr.

The James Froggy Carr Club was established in 1971 in memory of James “Froggy” Carr (so it’s a pretty good name). Froggy was a neighborhood guy who died in a football accident in 1970. His buddies, who were already planning on forming a New Year’s club before he died, decided to name their new club in his honor. What started with a few guys “marching up the street” (slang for participating in the Mummers parade) to honor their buddy has grown into the biggest Comics brigade in the parade, with over seven hundred marchers annually.

I’ve been going out with Froggy Carr since I’ve been old enough to remember. My dad started going out with Froggy Carr shortly after its inception, after his buddy and future best man Eddie Foley invited him out with the club.
*
As soon as my father was confident that he could carry me while fucked up and not drop me, I was going out in the parade.
*
The same went for my brother, Dennis.

But the importance of the Mummers club to the neighborhood lies not in the technicalities between the types of Mummers or in winning first prize in the parade, which is a bragging right and not a financial reward. Simply put, families, friendships, and lives are built around these clubs. They are much more than just a place to go and drink. The people in the Mummers club become part of one’s family. Mummers music is played at weddings. Babies get fitted for wench dresses. Some Mummers are laid out in their casket in the Mummers suit. South Philadelphians, particularly Second Streeters, bring the same rabidity to the Mummers as they do to Philly sports and cheesesteaks. Though the Mummers Parade only occurs one day a year, being a Mummer is an annual responsibility and a lifetime relationship. It is not just an association but an identity, tying tighter familial and social bonds and establishing family lore.

True to this, the Mummers play a significant role in my own family history.

In the early afternoon on New Year’s Day 1977, the woman who would become my mother, Kathleen Teresa Brennan, Irish Rose, eldest of three sisters and third of six children, stood with her girlfriends on Second Street, watching the Mummers go by. While the official parade goes down Broad Street, many clubs take a walk down Second Street, the home of Mummery and location of many Mummer clubhouses, after the Broad Street run, and many spectators gather on Two Street to watch, making Second Street the unofficial after-party/parade spot. A Second Streeter all her life and thus a veteran of many parades, my mom took pictures of these Mummers as she and her friends drank and laughed at their costumes and drunkenness. Her face was covered with Mummers’ makeup, since one of the traditions of the New Year’s Day parade is that you can’t turn down a Mummer when he asks for a small Happy New Year kiss.

Through the revelry, the explosion of confetti, the bustle of rainbow-colored costumes, and her own undoubtedly glassy eyes, she spotted a single Mummer, a Comic dressed in a wench suit. At first glance, he was just one of the thousands of Mummers on the street, but when she looked at him closer, she saw something. On the shoulder of his yellow wench dress she could make out a stain. At first she guessed that it was a wine stain, but as the Mummer drew nearer, she made out what the stain was: blood. More alarming than the blood on the Mummer’s shoulder was the way he completely disregarded it, continuing to dance and carry on and have a grand old time.

My mother took out her camera and snapped a quick picture before the bloody drunken Mummer strutted harmlessly by her, and this New Year’s Day continued like the others before it. Days later she’d get the film developed, go over the day’s pictures with her girlfriends, and they’d stop and marvel at the Bloody Drunken Mummer (as he was now officially known), wondering what had happened. How had he been hurt? Had he fallen? Was he cut? How could he be so drunk to completely ignore the blood on his shoulder? After a moment and a confounded shake of her head, my mom flipped to the next picture. Eventually, the picture of the Bloody Drunken Mummer was thrown into a shoe box with other pictures and put away, a harmless memory of another raucous New Year’s Day.

This shoe box was stored in the basement of her parents’ house, where she was living at the time, with her other pictures and junk. When she moved out, she took the shoe box and others just like it from one place to the next, until all the picture-filled shoe boxes ultimately settled into her closet in the home she shared with her new husband, Dennis.

It was there that she rediscovered her pictures. Pregnant with her second child, she took it upon herself to clean out her closet to make room for the new baby. Not that the baby would be living in the closet, of course, but because space was at a premium and what could be thrown out, should; such is the cycle of life in a row home.

When she opened the closet door and began sorting, she noticed the piles of shoe boxes in the corner, neatly stacked upon each other. She smiled, a real nostalgia smile, one of those smiles that fill you with warmth, brought by pleasant ghosts. It was only noon. She had plenty of time to go through the pictures for a little while before getting started. She sat down and started looking.

She sat on the bed, gazing fondly at the pictures for hours. There were pictures of her as a young girl, pictures of her with her brothers and her sisters, pictures of her with her mother and her father. And there were pictures of her with her friends from grade school, from the playground, from high school and after. After some time she came upon a picture that made her laugh: the one of the Bloody Drunken Mummer. Just as she remembered him, there he was: green makeup, yellow-gold wench dress, big bloodstain on his shoulder, bigger smile on his face. She put this picture in the pile that she was keeping on her right, which was a collection of particularly funny or interesting pictures to show her husband later when he got home from work.

Indeed, when my dad came home from work, he was treated to a slide show of the day’s treasures, getting explanations for each and every picture (
This is me and Lynn on our first day of class at St. Maria Goretti. This is me and Jackie down the shore…
). He sat on the bed next to my mom, listening patiently though not intently, his attention waning with each picture and story behind it (I mean, how many pictures could he marvel at of her and her brothers and sisters by the pool down the shore?). But then he saw it—the picture of the Bloody Drunken Mummer.

My mom’s comment on the picture, delivered with a laugh, was only “And then look at this moron.” My dad took the picture from her, reviewed it more closely, and said in a slightly offended tone, “Hey—that moron is me.”

It definitely was him. He remembered little of that New Year’s, but he remembered him and his buddies getting in a fight, a fight that resulted in him getting stabbed (“a little bit”) in the shoulder. It was not a deep wound, but just a small cut, enough to bleed but not enough to hurt. So he kept on marching in the parade, fueled in no small part by blackberry brandy he carried in his pouch.

He held the photo in his hand. Fate, he smiled, putting the picture on the bed between them. Fate. Before they were husband and wife, before they were boyfriend and girlfriend, they were destined for each other, brought into each other’s worlds by a stab wound and a parade. Fate.

Only in Philadelphia, maybe. Only on Second Street, for certain.

Really, can you blame my mom for falling in love with this guy?

Chapter Three

Intermezzo: Faith, Baptism, Prison

W
hat I’ve always found appealing about the Catholic Church is its, for lack of a better word, symmetry. There’s good, and there’s bad. Good is led by Jesus and the saints, bad led by the Devil and the demons. Do good all your life, you go to Heaven. Be a jerk all your life, and you’re going to Hell. It’s really not that hard to get the basic gist of it.

There are two types of sins: venial, which covers everything from white lies to making fun of your sister (the small stuff); and mortal, which ranges from missing church to murder (the “big” stuff). There are two books of the Bible: the Old Testament, all the stuff before Jesus; and the New Testament, which details Jesus’ life. For every point, there’s a counter, which is helpful when you’re required to memorize all this stuff in school.

If we enlist the help of our second hand, we can count the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride. These were my favorite. Seven was my favorite number, since I was born on the seventeenth day of the seventh month in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-nine. Not only that, “deadly” was right there in the title; if you want to talk about deadly anything—snakes, sins, whatever—well, I want to listen. And lastly, there’s your road map to Heaven right there: don’t get boners, overeat, hoard money, be lazy, get mad, feel jealous, or be boastful and you’re pretty much punching your ticket through those pearly gates.

And if you need help against these seven deadly sins, there are seven sacraments.

Baptism

You, as a newborn, get your forehead drenched with holy water. This is also called a “christening.” It is supposed to symbolize purification or being born into Christ or something like that.

Then just like that, you’re in—you are on your way to becoming a productive member of the Catholic Church. Never mind that you really don’t have a choice in the matter, because, you know, you’re a baby and all, and not exactly prepared to ponder the nature and example of Christ, preoccupied as you are with shitting yourself, crying, and boobies.
*
That’s why you have godparents, who are supposed to make sure that you become a good Catholic throughout your life. I’ve seen my godmother and godfather possibly six times in my life. So maybe that’s why I stink at being Catholic now and only use my Catholicism as an excuse to not use birth control (“Stella or Sheila or Rob or whatever, I can’t use a condom—I’m Catholic!”).

Penance/Reconciliation/Confession

In second grade or thereabouts, you go into this thing that looks like a large, glorified (literally) phone booth. The priest is in the booth with you, but in another part of it, so that you don’t see his face and he doesn’t see yours. This is supposed to allow for anonymity, even though your priest knows your family very well and knows you as the kid who pees his pants in Phonics every Wednesday or thereabouts.

Then you say, “Bless me father for I have sinned. This is my first confession, these are my sins.” You tell the priest what you’ve done wrong, holding nothing back, then you say a prayer with him, and then he gives you some prayers to say on your own. You leave the booth, say those prayers, and
voilà
—you’re forgiven.

This sacrament is the sweetest deal of all. Once you begin receiving penance, you can do whatever you want, sinwise, but as long as you tell a priest about your sins and say some Hail Marys and Our Fathers, you get a clean slate. Yes, you read that right. No matter how much you sin, you can just “confess” these sins, do your penance, and get into Heaven. Yeah, I know—pretty awesome.

I haven’t been to confession in a while, but when I do go again, it’ll sound something like: “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been, oh, fifteen years since my last confession and these are my sins. Actually, a question first. So I had this remote-controlled airplane, and, long story short, my neighbor died. I’d really rather not get into the details, for a number of reasons, but what’ll this cost me? Two Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition? Also, a tree and most of a bakery was destroyed. So you might want to throw another Hail Mary on there.”

Holy Communion

Dressed up in a sweet white suit, you eat the body and blood of Christ in the form of a very bland wafer and some wine (sorry, God, but the wafer really could use some kick). The wafer and wine become the body and blood of Christ through a miracle called
transubstantiation,
which, yes, you will need to know how to spell.

You can only receive communion if you have no mortal sins on your soul, which is why you must receive penance
before
communion. That’s another difference between mortal and venial sins: having mortal sins on your soul will prevent your entrance to Heaven, even if it’s a lame mortal sin, like missing Mass. Therefore, if when you die you are a regular churchgoer who happens to be the kingpin of the largest car-stealing ring in the Northeast, you can still make it to Heaven. If in your spare time you chew food for toothless orphans but suddenly die on a Tuesday after missing Mass on the previous Sunday because you wanted to sleep in, see you in Hell. The point is, you can’t eat a part of God or Jesus or whoever if you have a serious sin on your soul.