“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 root of his severe agita.
I knew for sure that he had eaten four tacos for breakfast that morning in the school cafeteria because he had almost choked to death on one of them right in front of me. He was eating it with a fork and when I asked him why he said “It keeps me from biting my hand.” I sat and watched him eat like I was Dian Fossey observing a gorilla in the jungle and at one point, he caught me staring at his tremendous man boobs.
“My eyes are up here!” he grunted and after I apologized, 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, “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 assuring us that he was okay, he sat right back down and started eating again. We were dumbstruck. His eyes were still watery from almost dying and he just continued stuffing his face like nothing happened, even with the half-eaten taco wad still clinging to his wet T-shirt as a reminder.
But that was breakfast, and now it was just past dinnertime, meaning that Ozzy had likely eaten three or four more times since his near-death experience.
“What did you have for lunch?” I asked.
“More tacos.”
“And for dinner?”
“Tacos.”
“It was probably the tacos,” I deadpanned in disbelief. I knew Ozzy was a glutton, but a glutton for punishment? The guy was almost murdered by a carne asada taco and he kept returning to the scene of the crime like he was tempting fate. That which does not kill us…, I thought, but Ozzy didn’t have the self-awareness to laugh in the face of death, and the fact that he wasn’t exhibiting the usual trauma-induced avoidance associated with PTSD led me to believe that his compulsion for traumatic reenactment was completely involuntary. Almost like his brush with asphyxia had caused enough temporary brain damage to shock his body and somehow keep it stuck on a monotrophic diet of beef and chicken tacos.
“I also had a torta during Study Hall,” he groaned and I thought Oh, he’ll be fine.
But he definitely wasn’t fine at the moment, sitting there doubled over on that locker room bench, all suited up like the rest of us in our silly football costumes, waiting for our six o’clock match against our crosstown rivals the Riverside Hamsters, or whatever their dopey mascot was. I didn’t pay much attention in high school, and I didn’t care much for sports either. I was only on the roster because they needed bodies (any schmuck who tried out made the team), and the only reason I tried out was to make myself more visible to the hot muchachas of Papachango High. Like most American institutions of secondary learning, members of the football squad wore their team jerseys on Fridays for pep rallies and my freshman brain was convinced that such self-promotional machismo disguised as school spirit would allow me to shed my virginity before the first kickoff of the season, but it was already the end of homecoming week and my proverbial cherry was redder and riper 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, Oswaldo (you’ve met “Ozzy”), and our buddy Fausto. You could always 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.
“Yeah, coach?”
“Go get some ice!”
Fausto deflated, then lumbered back to the locker room in his usual labored style of running. He had one leg longer than the other and how he got assigned as the back-up to the back-up was always a mystery to us because Fausto was not fleet of foot. Even Ozzy could outrun him. By the time Fausto returned with the bucket, it was half-empty from the spillage caused by his uneven gait, and the ice that remained was half-melted because of the delay, but it didn’t matter. The second-stringer was already back in the game with his ankle wrapped up because Our Coach must’ve determined that an injured player at 35% was still better than Fausto at 100%.
We didn’t care, though. We weren’t players; we were just team members. During our weekly practices we would sit in a circle with our legs crossed and gab like little school girls with the other benchers. The only time the term players applied was that one day when someone brought a deck of cards 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 hands, 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, all hell broke loose.
“It’s my turn to shuffle,” said Lawrence, one of the other pine-riders on the team, before the two starters came over all mad and muscular and busted up our game by hurling insults at us and soiling our immaculate practice uniforms by stomping on us with their dirty cleats. Lawrence had a comb in his hair and Patrick grabbed it and pulled down the front of his dirty football pants to reveal a thicket of crotch hair. He started combing his bush and Lawrence looked away in horror.
“Look at me!” demanded Patrick, and when Lawrence obeyed, Patrick hurled the pube-tainted comb at his face and it smacked him right in the mouth.
“Are you laughing at me?” asked Ozzy, interrupting my flashback. He was now sweating and clutching his borborygmic gut with both paws.
“No, I was just remembering that time when Patrick raked his pubes with Lawrence’s comb and–”
“Fire-rrhea!” shrieked Ozzy before he turned and made a beeline for the locker room shitter. He had a cupped hand over his clinched butt cheeks as he shambled away, 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 next to where Ozzy was now blowing out his colon. 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 perfect posture. (FERP!)
A few minutes later, the Papachango Panthers were gathered behind the bleachers awaiting the announcer’s introduction over the PA system. Our Coach tried to pump us up 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 literally eating a cracker.
“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 the team 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 banner. The trainers got to him and at first they thought to put him on a two-man gurney but he was too heavy 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 Franken-banner after intermission, we were down three touchdowns, but somehow we came back and made it a game, and eventually only lost by a field goal. We didn’t contribute to the score, of course, me and my fellow bench-warmers, but like always, we did stand on the sidelines in our bright, white uniforms, smelling like Fabreze because we never had to wash them. Those unis stayed as clean and as pure as my virginity that whole season, and I guess that’s the tradeoff: non-players don’t get injured, and they don’t get dirty, but they don’t get laid either. Still, we were ready to go, and I like to think that if any one of those players on that field had been sidelined due to injury (even those assholes Patrick and Malcolm), any one of us non-players would’ve been more than ready to strap on our helmet and go out there and fetch that poor bastard some ice.