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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For
Intelligent Life (EXODUS)
The Three Musketeers Breakup
I had a lot of
friends from different circles, but there were three of us who
had been called the “Three Musketeers” since high school, I
guess because we lifted weights obsessively, usually together.
The Musketeers were: Johnny Q., Big John Baloney and me. Back
then, Johnny Q. had the most radical looking chest, weighed
about 200 pounds and was five foot ten inches tall. He was very
strong, very fast and possessed extraordinary coordination that
was evident when playing basketball. He could even dunk the
ball.
Johnny Q. was
also hyper intelligent and a track one student. I guess having a
father who was a brilliant literature professor at St. Josephs
University didn’t hurt him any. Johnny Q. possessed a very
rough-looking masculine face. A face that was crudely handsome,
a face like Charles Bronson would have if he had some
German-Irish features thrown it. Johnny Q. seemed to be more
like an adult in many ways. I suppose that the combination of
his physicality coupled with his intelligence and his manner
made it seem this way. To most people, Johnny Q., was a curious
mix of affability and menace. He often had a look on his face
that a rattlesnake would have, you know, like, “I love life, I
want to get along, but don’t you tread on me mother fucker”,
that kind of look. Even the phys-ed teachers and coaches, some
of who could be assholes and bullies gave Johnny Q. a wide
berth.
The other Musketeer, Big John Baloney, I met when he was in 5th
grade and I was in 7th.
Even in 5th
grade, he was a husky, chubby kid I nicknamed Dan Blocker.
As Big John got
older, he developed a very bad case of acne and still carried a
lot of excess weight. One summer, after he moved from Norristown
to Upper Merion, he dieted, ran, lifted weights, his acne
lessened and he lost most of his fat, putting on a lot of
muscle; back then, he looked like a freak. He was just shy of
six foot and weighed about 240 pounds. He looked like a nice mix
of John Travolta, and Lou Ferrigno, with recombinant genes of a
lowland gorilla thrown in for good measure.
As the years
went on, Big John only got handsomer, yet his self-esteem never
made the transformation that his body and face had. Despite the
fact of his low self-esteem, John had an undying fascination
with his reflection. You could not pass a mirror without John
getting distracted from the conversation he may have been
holding with you at the time.
If you happened
to be visiting John, he was usually shirtless, which in of
itself was not unusual, but when he come back to the living room
with proffered drinks, his eyes became riveted to the large wall
mirror behind you as he struggled to chat and gaze
narcissistically at his image at the same time. For him, the
task usually proved daunting, if not impossible. John was
compulsive about openly caressing his body as he lounged on the
couch engaging in conversations. He was also an itinerant thief;
his main victim was his mother.
On dozens of
occasions he would dip into his mother purse to take out
twenties or whatever he felt he needed, always weighing his need
with what she hopefully would not notice.
Ruby, his
mother, always treated her hulking son as if he was still her
little baby and would fret over him like a hen with a helpless
cripple chick.
Big John did
not have the confidence to go after women. They had to throw
themselves at him before he would respond. Big John loved to
lie. He told one of my female friends that he had terminal
stomach cancer with the hopes of getting sympathy sex. You know,
lets do it one last time before I go into the great beyond
argument.
Big John
Baloney would often tell the women my friends and I were seeing,
especially the ones that I was seeing, stories that would insure
that the girls would be terrified of us. For example, we used to
go out to bars, where I would invariably be hitting it off with
some young lady, kissing, hugging and petting with her.
I would go to the
bathroom to do my business and by the time I came back, the
woman I was sure I would be bedding that night was suddenly
terrified of me. Often she would be cowering next to big John.
When I tried to talk or get near the woman, she would invariably
shrink and cower from me in terror. It was years before I found
that big John took these opportunities to “educate” these women
about my unfortunate “Vietnam experience.”
John would say,
“Vinny is the greatest guy in the world. He would give you the
shirt off his back—when he’s sober—but ever since he got
back from Vietnam, he gets drunk a lot. On a few occasions, I’ve
seen Vinny beat a few women terribly. They could barely be
recognized. One will never be beautiful again.”
John would go
on to assure them that, before my many confirmed kills in
Vietnam, I was not that way, that it was Vietnam that had tore,
me up emotionally.
He said he would stay
around to protect me from myself, as well as protect them from
me.
It would be
years before I found out what his game was. I eventually got
this info from friends of the terrified women or, later, from
the women themselves. Eventually, we shunned John as he had
stolen from Johnny Q. We did miss his stories, however, at least
some of them. Big John could make up a B.S. story at the drop of
a hat.
Once we went to
Jersey to party and came across two women who looked very
Italian and were very much into the Italian-American culture.
They had been staring at Big John because of his extraordinarily
handsome features. Even though he was of Irish descent he had
that half Black-Irish and half Italian look, similar to that of
John Travolta. The girls were complimenting John on his looks,
remarking how Italian he looked. Always the opportunist and
seeing a chance that he could get laid, he decided to bullshit
them.
Without
blinking an eye or skipping a beat, he said, “I am Italian.” The
girls were, of course happy, so they asked him what his name
was.
John said, “My
name is John Baloney.”
They were
stunned and said, “Baloney? Italian?”
Without
blinking he said, “Yeah, it ends with an i.”
I must admit…
that was amusing.
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(GENESIS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(REVELATIONS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(JUDGMENT DAY)
THE MARINES: GOD'S CHOSEN
WARRIORS
VINCE'S GYM
ADVENTURES IN MARINE BIOLOGY
CONVERSATIONS WITH NEO
NEO TEACHES ME THE ART OF WAR
& PEACE;
His Version of The Matrix
MEMORIES OF MY FATHERS
ZEN & THE ART OF RESISTANCE
TRAINING:
A Yogic & Scientific Approach To Weight
Lifting
ZEN & THE BIOLOGY OF
TRANSCENDENCE:
The First Matrix of Psychic
Phenomena
ZEN & THE ART OF KINESIOLOGY:
The Yogic & Scientific
Approach To Movement
ZEN & YOUR ENERGY SYSTEMS
ZEN & VARIOUS ASPECTS OF
TRAINING
HOMEPAGE TO MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(EXODUS)
HOMEPAGE |
