“It musta been something I ate,” said Ozzy, clutching his enormous belly. He was the size of a baby humpback whale and ate everything he could all of the time so it was difficult to pinpoint the cause of his discomfort.
He had eaten four tacos for breakfast earlier that morning in the school cafeteria and I remember it vividly because he had almost choked to death on one of them. He was eating it with a fork and when I asked him why he said “It keeps me from biting my hand.” I watched him eat like Dian Fossey observing a gorilla in the jungle and at one point, he caught me staring at his tremendous man boobs and he said “My eyes are up here, puto.” I apologized and he took such a voracious bite from his skewered taco that a piece got lodged in his throat and he started hacking like a cat coughing up a hairball.
I tried to unclog the taco by slapping his humongous back but it was like shooting BB’s at a rhino so I emptied his large glass of blue Kool-Aid into his red face. It didn’t help but it caused his nipples to get rock hard like in a wet T-shirt contest and I got caught staring at his enormous bitch tits again. He pointed two shaky fingers up to his bulging eyeballs and reminded me in his choking voice, “My eyes … up here, puto!” I apologized again and got behind him to perform the Heimlich maneuver but my arms would only reach halfway around. I had to call over another kid so we could lock hands around Ozzy’s big pansa like “ring-around-the-rosie” and after one coordinated thrust, we pumped a soggy piece of hard taco shell out of his mouth and onto his upper chest.
Somebody gave him some water and after informing us that he was okay, he sat right back down and casually resumed eating. Can you believe that? His eyes were still watery from choking and he just continued stuffing his face like nothing happened, even with the soggy culprit still clinging to his wet T-shirt as a reminder.
As usual, Ozzy must’ve eaten three or four more times since breakfast because now it was just past dinnertime. We were all suited up and waiting in the locker room before our six o’clock football game against our crosstown rivals the Riverside Hamsters, or whatever their dumb mascot was. I didn’t pay much attention in high school, and I didn’t care much for sports. I was only on the squad for two reasons: one, they needed bodies, and two, I needed sex. Not with my teammates, of course, but with the muchachas. Members of the team wore their jerseys on Fridays for pep rallies and that display of school spirit (aka self-promotional machismo) had me convinced that I would lose my freshman virginity before the first kickoff, but it was already the end of homecoming week and my cherry was redder than ever. I think it had something to do with the fact that I was an all-state interscholastic bench-warmer. All three of us were: me, Fausto, and Oswaldo, whom you now know as “Ozzy.” You could identify us from the bleachers during games because we had the whitest, most unused uniforms on the team. Fausto was the only one that ever came close to getting dirty. He was our third string halfback, and one night, the second-stringer twisted his ankle. They dragged him off the field and Our Coach pointed at Fausto and said “You!” Our Coach didn’t even know his name but Fausto quickly put his helmet on and rushed over. “Go get some ice!” ordered Our Coach and Fausto lumbered back to the locker room in his usual labored style of running. That’s why he was a third-stringer, and the reason why Our Coach kept the injured player in the game over Fausto, who was at full strength.
During our weekly practices we would sit in a circle with our legs crossed and gab like little school girls with the other benchers. Someone brought a deck of cards one time and we played Crazy Eights on the sidelines and sipped cups of Gatorade while the rest of the team practiced in the sweltering heat. After a few rounds, two first-string players, Patrick and Malcolm, came off the field to get some Gatorade. When they found the cooler half-empty, and saw us playing cards, they lost their minds.
“It’s my turn to shuffle,” said Chris, one of the other pine-riders on the team, before Patrick and Malcolm came over and broke up the game. The two muscular starters hurled insults at us and soiled our immaculate uniforms by kicking us in the back with their dirty cleats. Chris had a comb in his hair and Patrick grabbed it and pulled down his dirty football pants to reveal a grown man’s pubic area. He started combing his bush and Chris looked away in horror.
“Look at me!” yelled Patrick and when Chris looked back, Patrick threw the pube-tainted comb at him and it smacked him right in the face.
“Why are you laughing?” asked Ozzy, interrupting my flashback. He was now sweating and clutching his borborygmic gut with both paws.
“I was just remembering that time when Patrick combed his pubes with Chris’ comb and–”
“It’s fire-rrhea!” shrieked Ozzy before he turned and made a beeline for the locker room shitter. He shambled away with a cupped hand over his clinched butt cheeks like he was expecting to catch the fury that was about to spout from his blowhole. The poor son of a bitch had his helmet on, too. We never played one second of football but even in the locker room, Ozzy always had his helmet strapped on, ready to go.
“Listen up, Panthers! We got an announcement!” Our Coach came into the locker room with Monica Garibay, the captain of the cheerleading squad. I had fantasized about her since the fifth grade, in every scenario imaginable, including a steamy episode that played out in the showers of that very same locker room, close to where Ozzy was now putting the dire in diarrhea. I was toward the back of the room and could hear the (TOILET BOWL BLASTS) during Monica’s announcement: “I just wanted to let you boys know that we have a homecoming banner (RUMBLE-SPLAT!) that we want the whole team to run through at halftime. The banner will also be on display (GURGLE-SQUIRT!) at the beginning of the game but we will display it midfield. (STACATTO-BLAP!) I will be back at halftime to remind everybody and hopefully we’ll be up by a bunch of touchdowns!” Monica gave a “Yay!” and executed a cheer jump but everybody just stared at her. The display might’ve garnered a better reaction in unison with the rest of the squad, but performing it alone seemed random and awkward. She did an about face and marched out with her perfect posture. (FERP!)
A few minutes later, the Papachango Panthers were gathered behind the bleachers during the visiting team introductions. Our Coach tried to pump up the team with his usual array of football cliches: Play all 60 minutes tonight! Leave it all on that field! You look like death eatin’ a cracker, son! That last one was addressed to Ozzy, who was front and center, dripping with sweat and looking overly queasy.
“You ready to play some football, or what!”
“Yes, Our Coach!” snorted Ozzy.
“All right then! When they call us, I want you boys to storm that battlefield like a bunch o’ soldiers! You understand me?”
The whole team this time: “Yes, Our Coach!”
“Who’s number one?!”
“Panthers!” (We were in last place.)
“And who’s gonna win?”
“Panthers!”
The announcer introduced us and we stampeded toward the field like a pack of wild animals. The crowd went bonkers and we all made our way to our end of the stadium for pregame warm-ups, except for Ozzy. He veered toward the fifty yard line and smashed through the homecoming banner all by himself because nobody told him, then ran like a maniac toward our end zone before he collapsed in a contorted pile at the twenty yard line. The fans were busting a gut and the cheerleaders screamed and shouted obscenities at Ozzy for ruining their paper banner. The trainers got to him and at first they thought to put him on a two-man gurney but he was too heavy to carry so they rolled him off the field in an ambulance stretcher.
He was fine. Just a stomach bug. They gave him some anti-diarrhea medication and plenty of Gatorade. He was back in the locker room with the rest of the team by halftime, along with Monica, who returned to inform us that they had repaired the busted banner with masking tape.
When the Papachango Panthers broke through the patched up banner after the intermission, we were down three touchdowns but we came back and made it a game, eventually losing by only 3 points. We didn’t contribute, of course, me the virgin, Fausto with his dopey stride, and Ozzy still woozy from his gastro-blasto crap attack, but we were ready to go in if the team needed us.