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    Levittown
    Levittown
    Levittown
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Levittown

    By Manheim Wagner

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A story of a young nonconformist growing up in America’s second planned housing community, Levittown portrays life in the late 1970s with a sardonic eye trained on the country’s time-honored traditions and questionable preoccupations. Set against a backdrop of classic rock, NASCAR and elementary school life, Levittown is the tale of a young boy named Michael trying to find himself amid a swirling tide of scripted patriotism and false hopes.

    “Poignant and provocative, Levittown pulls no punches as it unpacks familial dysfunction and skewers the American suburban dream through adolescent eyes. Though rooted in ’70s malaise, it still offers hope for a better tomorrow, provided one goes their own way instead of following the herd.” — Martin Penn-Woods

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManheim Wagner
    Release dateApr 12, 2016
    ISBN9781311154002
    Levittown
    Author

    Manheim Wagner

    Manheim Wagner has spent the majority of his life in fear of having a full-time, nine-to-five job. Originally from Levittown, Pennsylvania, he worked a steady stream of dead-end jobs before taking his first leap into the unknown in 1997, when he ended up teaching English in South Korea and nurturing his desire for exploration. Since then, he has lived in such countries as Australia, Scotland, Vietnam and Japan. He currently resides in Málaga, Spain.

    Read more from Manheim Wagner

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      Book preview

      Levittown - Manheim Wagner

      1

      I first became aware that I could get a hard-on when I was five years old, watching soap operas with my grandmother. Lying on the couch, I felt a tingling sensation — my dick was getting bigger, and not knowing what was happening, I thrust my penis forward from its base to its head.

      It felt good; the blood was rushing to my cock, tingling with electricity as I noticed a blond-haired actress who played a doctor named Monica.

      She looked just like my kindergarten classmate Christine, who promised me that she was going to marry me while we were playing during recess one day.

      It was 1976 and America was 200 years old, or so the public was led to believe, and I was enthralled with the first space shuttle test flight atop a Boeing 747. Christine lived one block away from me in the suburban sprawl of circular streets. When it snowed, we would play together making houses out of snow. She was a figure skater and I was a football player. We had our whole life planned; we were going to be rich and famous, have a son and a daughter, and be in love forever.

      That’s how it went that winter. Christine spun around in circles, jumping and twisting into the cold air while I threw imaginary footballs to myself. I was the star quarterback who won every Super Bowl, and I had a beautiful wife who was an Olympic gold medal figure skater. Together, we were a power couple; the world just didn’t know it.

      Our dreams were big with no end in sight. Then Christine told Bobby Taylor she would marry him and just like that I was divorced.

      You see, Bobby Taylor was a Jehovah Witness who was smaller than me and wore glasses. All the other boys in my class called him spaz; he always colored in the lines and did everything our teacher, Mrs. Graver, told us to do.

      It pissed me off. Mrs. Graver was nothing more than a wrinkly old bitch; she always yelled at me because I always did what I wanted to do — her badly permed gray hair didn’t warrant any attention.

      She was a Luddite, who forced us do stupid things — one time, she made us make a plaster relief of our hand, where she had all of us line up, one by one, and plunge our hand into a pie tin.

      It was boring, and I slid my hand side-to-side, trying to make an abstract representation. But all that did was cause Mrs. Graver to hit me over the head with her pen.

      Do it again! she yelled, resetting the plaster, thrusting my right hand back into the pie tin.

      What a stupid cow; I moved my hand back and forth across the pie tin, causing Mrs. Graver to unleash all her menopausal frustrations onto me.

      Why can’t you behave just like all the other kids? she shouted, pushing my hand back into the plaster.

      There, what a nice handprint. Your mother will be happy.

      What bullshit — she singled me out every time I did something that deviated from the norm. The bitch chased me in my dreams with Frankenstein’s monster.

      I felt helpless. I couldn’t escape kindergarten, and Christine was going to marry Bobby Taylor — I drew a sword battle on the hallway wall and cut him to pieces, taking Christine back.

      But reality didn’t work that way. Christine said she hated me. I didn’t care. Monica was a doctor who gave me a hard-on.

      It went that way for a while. I’d come home from kindergarten and watch TV with my grandmother, waiting for Monica. I had no time in my life for a figure skater that always did what Mrs. Graver said. I was in love with a doctor.

      But something was changing. I got angry when Monica would kiss another man who wasn’t her husband. I could handle one rival but not two.

      Drawing another battle to kill more adversaries was out of the question. That would make me feel guilty. After all, I went to Mass every Sunday morning with my grandfather.

      We were Catholic, but my grandmother was Russian Orthodox. She listened to polka music on the radio while we were at church.

      The hour and a half of repeated periods of standing, sitting and kneeling felt like an eternity. I was never quite sure if God was in the church. Everybody said He was but I couldn’t see Him.

      All I saw were grownups putting money into collection baskets and getting in a line to eat what they called the Body of Christ. After which, they’d kneel and say prayers, then stand up, shaking each other’s hands, saying peace be with you.

      It made no sense; the Vietnam War had just ended, and the image of that helicopter trying to leave the American Embassy was still fresh. People everywhere clung to it like those poor people did to its landing skids.

      My grandfather said the war was all about money, and I believed him. He was a saint to me; without him, I wouldn’t be alive.

      You see, I was the product of a one-night stand. Both my mother and my father were seventeen years old when I was born. My father was Jewish and he wasn’t even dating my mother. He was on the outs with his girlfriend when he hooked up with my mom. All I knew was that he was an artist who moved to California.

      The story goes that when my mother figured out she was pregnant, she got scared and didn’t know what to do. So, she told Uncle Charles who was home on leave from the Navy, and one night at dinner he convinced her to tell my grandparents. Then my grandfather told my mother, You’re going to have the child.

      My father was surprised and confused; he wanted to be an artist and didn’t know what to do. So, he told his parents, who told him not to wreck his life for some half-Catholic bastard.

      So my father’s mother forbade him to have any contact with my mother or me. The old bitch even denied that I was his son right up until the blood test proved I was his son.

      All of this happened in 1971, when the old world and its immigrants had a stronger effect on social norms, and my father’s mother told my mother that she had no choice other than to name me after my paternal grandfather, and put me up for adoption through a Jewish adoption agency.

      2

      Unlike all the other kids in the neighborhood, I didn’t have a father who tried to act tough. I played with matchbox cars and watched the clouds go by, while the other boys rode past me on their big wheels, calling me names.

      Who cared? I narrated stories that I saw in the clouds till my grandfather came home from work.

      You’re never free until you take your shoes off, he’d say, dropping his soot-covered shoes outside the front door.

      Thirty-seven years on the railroad — supper at 5 p.m. — meat and potatoes every day but Friday — we ate well. My grandmother was a good cook; her specialties were pierogies and stuffed cabbage.

      And on Saturdays, my grandfather took me to the freight yard, where Mickey, the conductor would let me drive the locomotives, coupling them to boxcars and tankers.

      I bounced between my grandparents; my grandfather was my hero and my grandmother was a soft, plump woman who said heych every time she meant to say H.

      She smelled like lavender and always made sure I had nice clothes. In the autumn, she knitted sweaters for me to wear in winter, and in the spring she’d show me how to plant vegetables.

      3

      My grandfather came from a big family of German Irish Catholics. He never called me by name, Michael. He always called me Oscar, and he told me stories about growing up in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania making sleds from tabletops and ottomans. The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals were the best baseball team he’d ever seen; I knew more about the Gashouse Gang and Dizzy Dean than I did about Carlton Fisk.

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