The Phoenix and the Vortex - Part 2

On the mean streets of Flushing, Queens I had become the easy scapegoat prey of immigrant junior Aryans, struttin' home boyz, and San Juan-ites who were anxious to deflect the non-stop assault on their peoples and re-focus it on the skinny, big-eared, funny looking, crew cut Jap kid who skulked Parsons Boulevard like he "f-ckin' owned the motherf-cker!" More like I was perpetually lost, the criss-cross of streets, traffic lights, and cookie cutter apartment buildings all coagulating into a grand gestalt of confusion and endless wandering.

I would cross a concrete playground of swings and monkey bars on route to the grocery store for a carton of milk and, like the ghost shadows of Kowloon, suddenly be surrounded by a circling pack of sneering, tongue-wagging dingo pups, all chanting racist obscenities at me in 360 degree LucasFilm Surround-Sound, words I did not understand, like Tojo and slant and ones I knew all too well: dirty Jap. Then, like a swarm of buzzing locusts, they would descend upon me, pummeling their clenched fists into my gut, kicking, and grabbing and ripping my clothes as I swooned to the asphalt screaming, "Stop! Stop it! What'd I do? STOP!" As fast as they mysteriously materialized, these pre-pubescent cub scout KKK hooligans would vanish down shadowy alleyways and disperse to the wind like dandelion pollen.

I would crawl back to my building, up the elevator to my parents' threadbare two bedroom abode and collapse into my mother's open arms blathering like some compromised Pollyana, wetting the sofa and her skirt, her tears staining my brown corduroy pants as she stroked my hair and hugged me. When my dad came home he would order me to fight back, and I would gush like a Galveston jackrup rig puncturing the motherlode.

So disappointed in his son's distinct lack of Bushido warrior instincts, and fearing that his boys weren't quite masculine enough for his liking, some years later Dad enrolled both my brother and I in a judo class at the New York Buddhist Church on the upper westside of Manhattan, a Japanese-American Jodo Shinshu sect enclave and community center. Kevin and I wore pathetic white belts and uniforms as we were intoned with military extortations by the judo sensei to "Flip! Fall! Roll! Counter! Stand up!"

It must've been obvious to all casual observers that Kevin and I had far much less than our hearts invested in this endeavor, for we dreaded going Saturday mornings, preferring to watch Hanna Barbera cartoons to being treated like Marine Corp bootcamp maggots by a short oriental drill instructor with throbbing veins on his nearly-absent neck. As a last ditch desperate effort to preserve these two paying students and not lose face, sensei promoted us to yellow belts after four tortuous sessions. I could care less if he plucked gold bullion coins from his arse. This was not for me.

By 1965 my father was growing war weary of his 4 year commute into NYC each day, marching like some ancient Roman peasant through subterranean catacombs in the belly of the beast with their abrasive urine odor and passed-out derelicts scattered to and fro. He was hustling for work like a junk-addicted hooker scours johns with a spare Jackson on Manhattan's far westside, and his rent and overhead was devouring his profits faster than he could say, "antidisestablishmentarianism."

So my father did what every other smallville Royal Oakie in the Big City does when he's married, has two brats to fertilize on a daily basis, and a yearning for fauna, flora, grass (non-smoking kind), and an escape from bus exhaust, surly deli weiner-meisters, and Sihk taxi honkers: move his ass to the burbs pronto. Which is exactly what he did in 1965. He moved all our sh-t just across the George Washington Bridge to the NYC commuter town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, where silent era cinema gods like Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Tommy Edison, and D.W. Griffith ("D.W." to his friends) shot quickie 35mm one-reelers for celluloid-ravenous and adoring legions worldwide at the turn of the 20th century. In an unusual move, the old man rented two apartments in the newly erected, monolithic steel and concrete Horizon House (sounds eeriliy like a rehab center to me), Building Number Three, one to live in, the other for his burgeoning design office.

The daily beatings ceased. I would continue my elementary indocrination sans blood-thirsty gang rivalries and territorial gambits. The mini-me Adolfs, Jesuses, and Jermaines would be stunned by the absence of their favorite asian whipping boy and once again have to rip each other a new one, just like old times. I would enjoy some suburban respite, free to doodle Marvel-style to my thumper's content, unafraid to venture alone to the 7-11 for milk, candy, and comic books (the bonafide Dickensian serials of my era), and act for once like a normal kid doing mostly normal things normally. I was safe in suburb heaven once again. Until the next tsunami of sh-t hit the fan, natch.