Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

furtively secrete some false teeth into my mouth along with some squirts of ketchup and at the climactic moment pretend to bloody-gummily exclaim, Shh-kahby! and spit the teeth and ketchup slurp into my hands? Just imagining it ignited mad giggling. Whenever I thought the moment had arrived for me to slip away, fists deep in my pockets clasping teeth and ketchup packets, to quickly prepare my performance, I could never bring myself to go through with it, I always chickened out. Through that hot, steamy bicentennial summer they came pouring down the ramp onto the Beaver II, for many tourists, especially patriotic pilgrims, the climactic stop of their forced Freedom Trail marches, the sacred site where the cadres of the American underground resistance had staged their destructive carnival riot, striking the revolution’s first blow. All those usually-so-nice-seeming heartland moms and dads with sore Freedom Trail feet, exhausted, sweaty, thirsty, fed up with their bored, restless children, glad to be out of the sun as they crowded below deck into the briny mugginess to gather in front of the fo’c’sle, rousing themselves to listen to their rather exotic-looking teenaged tour guide deliver his spiel. Except often there would be at least one person in the bunch, usually an ordinary-seeming Freedom Trail Dad, who even before I got started would launch into a full-throated speech about how what this country needs is another Tea Party, the tyranny of the federal government, unfair taxation, why should their own earnings pay for welfare mothers’ vacations in Las Vegas and the Bahamas, that’s not what the Sons of Liberty fought for, blah, blah, blah, at least some of the men and even women usually responding, boisterously even: Well said! Hear hear! Huzzah! in imitation of what they thought were colonial Boston accents. This seemed to happen more and more as the summer went on, as if this form of vehement, supposedly patriotic speech-giving was becoming a fad out there, like the “streaking” craze was among people my own age. Many had driven halfway across the continent or farther on long-awaited summer vacations to have a sweet spot moment like this aboard the Boston Tea Party ship. So it was hard to imagine them much appreciating a skinny, monkey-faced boy with a big wild ’fro shouting about scurvy and holding out his hands filled with teeth and red slime. That freak of a tour guide you have working, you know what he did, he … Even Scott O’Donnell, never mind the owners, would have considered that just too inexcusably weird and would have felt forced to fire me. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck at home the rest of the summer, waiting to leave for college. Instead, every day I dutifully chattered: Here’s the fo’c’sle, folks. In stormy, icy seas, this is where the crew slept, jammed into these narrow bunks shoulder to shoulder like unwashed stinky, hairy human popsicles in a freezer tray! I hadn’t found that description in any maritime history book, I’d made it up myself. The more alert children and teenage girls reliably responded: Ick, gross. I’d lead them back to the cushy, antique-furnished captain’s quarters. Although Captain Hezekiah Coffin was a Nantucket Quaker, went this memorized speech, like the Beaver’s owners, too, the Rotches, who illegally snuck African slaves into their ship’s crews to lower wage costs, Captain Coffin was most cool to the Sons of Liberty. Scott O’Donnell had taught me to derisively draw out those words: “most cool.” Then I’d indignantly shout: Captain Coffin actually sympathized with the British Crown!

About fifteen years ago now, when my first novel was published, I came to Boston to give my first-ever bookstore reading, and the next morning I received a phone call from my book’s publicist telling me that a reporter from the Globe wanted to talk to me, in person. The novel had been featured on the front page of the newspaper’s Sunday Arts section. And now, a newspaper profile, that was a first too. The publicist was excited and I was too. I suggested that the reporter and I meet right here where I’m standing now, on the Congress Street Bridge, that way I’d be able to gesture at the Tea Party ship and say, During my senior year in high school and on into that bicentennial summer, I worked here as a tour guide. I used to especially like to sit up on that crow’s nest. The publicist thought it was a good promotional idea to stress my local roots. It was a chilly, overcast April afternoon, and I walked over in my black jeans and leather jacket, listening, I remember, to Jane’s Addiction on my Walkman. Fred Tarrell was the reporter’s name. He arrived at the bridge before me and was standing by the rail overlooking the ship. He looked around sixty, about my height, and he was wearing a beige raincoat that accented the slump of his shoulders, short curly white hair, small gray mustache, wide-apart blue-gray eyes, large head, cetacean almost. Fred Tarrell said hello, spoke my name without smiling, shook hands with a quick squeeze. The overcast sky, the reporter’s unexpected lack of warmth, a premonition maybe, made me think of spies in Cold War movies who arrange a rendezvous on a bridge to exchange information after which they depart in opposite directions, except one spy walks a few blocks and is murdered.

The reporter didn’t congratulate me on my novel or attempt any banter. He said, I’m sorry to put you on the spot like this, Francesco, but it’s best I get to the point. We received a fax at the newspaper that makes a serious allegation we feel obligated to follow up on. Do you know a woman named Lana Gatto?

Yes, we went to high school together, I answered, but I haven’t seen or heard from Lana in years. I felt apprehensive but also mystified. Fred Tarrell spoke the name of the high school, and I said, That’s right. But