Tony was decent in his studies, doing better in math and science than English or social sciences. But baseball was always with him; if there were a choice between homework and working on his swing, you can bet he would be in the park swinging away at any round object thrown at him. When he was in elementary school, he set a record for most balls hit onto the roof. Father Douglas was going to suspend him, but thought better of it at the last minute. Tony was too well liked by the faculty and student population for any real punishment. Tony even got his name in one of the papers for this rare and funny accomplishment. One of those human interest stories the public puts so much stock in.
In his junior year of high school, he had his first steady girlfriend, Sheila. She was dark haired and had fine Latina good looks for her age. After only three months of serious dating, they lost their virginities to each other in the backseat of his car. While being awkward, of course, it was also a time of frenzied happiness for the two. Sheila began to make plans for the future and while she did this, scared Tony away so much so that only one month after their wild night, they had broken up. Shortly thereafter his mother had a heart attack and died. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; her family had a history of heart problems. Tony blamed himself for her death; had he not been so sexually careless, he thought, none of this would have happened. God was punishing him.
Finally, he graduated high school and accepted a scholarship to play baseball for Notre Dame University. While his grades had not been good enough to get him there, his ball playing was. So Tony packed up his things, said goodbye to his two younger siblings and trekked to South Bend, Indiana.
Tony, being his naturally outgoing self, made many friends quickly and found himself never lacking for dates or someone willing to give him their notes from lecture or just someone to get something to eat with. At a fraternity initiation, he got drunk for the first time in his life. For once, he didn’t care what anyone else was saying and what anyone else thought of him. His inhibitions were gone and the fear of being liked was gone; he was just one of the guys and he loved the feeling. Getting drunk once every other week turned into once a week which turned into every weekend - all three days of it. Eventually, by spring semester, Tony had become an alcoholic in an alcoholic stupor pretty much all of the time. His friends - really acquaintances, he knew none of them well enough for the term of ‘friend’ - had deserted him by now. The only reason he was there, the baseball scholarship, was suspended after his first year. He had lost his batting stance, his composure, and his ability. When his grades came for that semester, all F’s, he unceremoniously withdrew and went back home to Chicago. The boy who had come in as an All-State athlete had left with a 1.4 G.P.A. having played only two games of baseball.
He came back to a cold, angry father and siblings who did not understand why their older brother cried and why their father yelled at all hours of the day. After a summer that consisted of being stared at by former classmates while he worked at the local restaurant as a busboy, he enrolled in some classes at a community college. Tony thought, perhaps if he got himself some standing, he could get some kind of engineering degree. But that was all for naught; the classes in quantum theory and calculus and behavioral science bored him stiff. He woke up nearly every morning wishing he could just shut his eyes and crawl back under the covers. When the grades came for the first semester, all F’s again, all he could do was look at them and wish he was sleeping and this was all a dream. He had even tried this time; not up to his real abilities, but more than he had at Notre Dame. That was it. His father kicked him out of the house. “Now he will learn to be a real, responsible man,” he said, not believing it as he said it. Tony walked down the front sidewalk for the last time as his father told his little brother and sister to shut up.
Tony wandered the streets for a couple weeks after being thrown out. He looked up some friends, but his friends from Catholic school had gone back to their colleges and their parents wanted nothing to do with some deadbeat. He tried getting a job anywhere but with no phone number and no address he was told to beat it. Tony pleaded and promised that he would be at a YMCA and that an address didn’t matter but no one listened to him. They didn’t really need to. Why hire a sad, pathetic looking 19 year old when rosy faced 16 year olds come out of the woodwork to make French fries? So he wandered…and wandered. He eventually found himself standing on the street corner looking for men or women or anyone to pick him up. Learning to fuck and suck was easy; living with himself as the sun drenched the sidewalks he paced wasn’t. His athletically toned body which had already began to go in college with the constant drinking was now in free-fall. A beer gut began to overhang and his hair which had always been jet black and dense was getting patchy. The drugs that his clients inevitably had were wreaking havoc with his immune system. It was not normal to cough blood and get chills in June.
So now Tony rides the subway every day. Sometimes the Red Line, sometimes the Blue Line, sometimes the Green Line. The others are just too short to be taken seriously if he doesn’t want to get caught. He’ll get off at one of the downtown subway stations every now and then and panhandle. His clothes are threadbare and when winter comes, he’s always at the shelters. Winter has become his favorite time of year. Occasionally he’ll see his father walking past him or with his brother and sister or just sitting waiting for the bus and he’ll get on his knees pleading with him for one more chance. “Just one more fucking chance, Dad!” he’ll scream at a lamp pole or door only to realize that his father is nowhere to be seen. When he goes into fitful sleeps for at most one hour at a time, he’ll dream that he’s back home with his mother and father. He is eight again. Everyone is laughing and running around. His friends pat him on the back and call him to play. A smile creeps onto his lips. Sometimes his mouth opens just far enough for people to see his missing teeth and the herpes spreading on his tongue.
Then the clocks all over Chicago struck twelve and it became March 28th. Tony slept through his birthday that day. When looking at a newspaper left on a train, he looked at the day and wondered why it seemed to have some significance. Then he got tired of wondering and fell asleep; it was just another day.
