Tag: books

The 70s were a carnival of ostentation and fakery. You strutted through junior high dances in Angels Flight bell-bottoms, paisley Dacron shirts, platform shoes, and pukka shell necklaces. In summer, you bared your tanned chest in fishnet tank tops and more gold chains than a Vegas lounge singer. Instead of building character, you sculpted a persona: muscular, flamboyant, visually arresting.

Even your face had to match your aesthetic. Inspired by the Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Bachelor of the Month,” you fixated on cheekbones and jawlines. Compared to Robert Conrad or Jan-Michael Vincent, you came up short. So you sucked in your cheeks—first occasionally, then obsessively—until you learned to speak while biting the inside of your face. You’d come home with raw, bleeding cheeks. You’d walk through school with puffed lats and exaggerated posture, only to be mocked by your classmates.

You were the punchline of a sitcom, a caricature of yourself.

This was the decade of the Mock Apple Pie—Ritz Crackers masquerading as apples. Authenticity took a back seat. Fakery got shotgun.

Perhaps the high priest of this philosophy was a man you called Frank Reeves.

It was the summer of 1977. You were spending every Saturday at Cull Canyon Lake, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil—zero SPF, all banana-scented seduction. And every weekend, there he was: Frank Reeves. Late twenties. Owner of a black 1976 Camaro with white racing stripes. Wavy brown hair, manicured mustache, deep tan, blue Speedos, white puka shells, and a gold chain glistening over his chest hair. He carried a Playboy cooler, a boombox, and a Frisbee, and he reeled in women like it was a sport.

You noticed that he always said the same things in the same order. Every Saturday, it was: “Paid my uncle five hundred for that paint job… Dad owns clothing stores… Helped him manage since high school… Waiting on a Hollywood callback… Own my own house in Parsons Estates.” He said “Parsons Estates” like it was a holy incantation.

Frank Reeves wasn’t just a cliché. He was a walking, Speedo-clad composite of How to Pick Up Girls!—Eric Weber’s infamous book of manipulation. You recognized his lines. You knew the script. He embodied the Playboy ideal: cosmopolitan, cocky, a god in his own eyes. And every Saturday, a new woman bought the lie.

You watched him work, all while reading your parents’ paperback version of The Happy Hooker on your beach towel. Then came the bee sting. A shriek. A girl gasped. “You stepped on a bee!”

Reeves tried to laugh it off, but his swollen foot looked like a smoked ham. Sweat poured down his chest. He collapsed, hyperventilating. Paramedics came. He was in anaphylactic shock.

You never found out if he survived. But the image stuck: a man all pose, no substance. A fake warrior devoted to a fake gospel. And like all fakes, he was eventually undone by something real—a bee, of all things. A tiny truth with a stinger.

By late morning at Canyon High, you had taken sanctuary in the Student Lounge—a sacred space masquerading as a study haven but better known for Olympic-level loafing and social maneuvering. Lined with shelves of crusty dictionaries and guarded by Mrs. Stinson at her post like a sloth in bifocals, the real action was found at the cushy couches. That’s where Paper Football reigned supreme: a sport that turned scrap paper into pigskin gold. Flick the triangle across the table. Let it hang off the edge—touchdown. Launch it between your opponent’s outstretched fingers—extra point. You figured ninety percent of student productivity was lost to this noble art.

You were flopped on an orange couch, thumbing through Nectar in a Sieve, trying to survive its soul-crushing tour of starvation and sorrow, when your survival instincts kicked in. You swapped it out for a bodybuilding magazine. Surely a glimpse of sculpted abs and hypertrophic deltoids could rescue your psyche.

That’s when Liz Murphy appeared—red hair blazing like a warning flare. Wearing a ketchup-colored tee and jeans, she plopped down beside you with the kind of energy that should be illegal before noon.

“What are you reading?” she asked, peering at the magazine.

“Article on Robbie Robinson. Some say his biceps peak is the best in history,” you said, delivering it with the gravitas of a man discussing global diplomacy.

She raised an eyebrow at the photo. “You want to look like that?”

“That’s the plan,” you said, puffing your chest with delusional pride.

She squeezed your bicep. “I think you look perfect just the way you are.”

“Perfect if you’re into track runners,” you said, trying to hide behind self-deprecating cool.

Mrs. Stinson glared at the two of you from her help desk, her eyes sharp enough to etch disapproval into stone. You buried your nose in Robbie’s glistening biceps and pretended to read.

Liz, undeterred, asked, “You seriously want to look like that?”

“My goal,” you declared, slipping into motivational speaker mode, “is to become Mr. Universe, then open a gym in the Bahamas.”

As the words exited your mouth, you immediately regretted them. But Liz didn’t blink.

“That’s so cool. You’re only fourteen and already have goals.”

“It’s called the Creative Visualization Principle,” you explained, summoning a vaguely authoritative tone. “You visualize your higher self, then manifest.”

“Where’d you read that?”

“My mom’s self-help books… or maybe one of these mags. I can’t remember.”

“You crack me up,” she said, smiling.

Then came your confession. “Liz, I did something gross. You might hate me.”

“I doubt it,” she said, intrigued.

You took a breath. “First day of school, I showed you a picture in that book. Said it was me hanging upside down on a chin-up bar.”

“Yeah?”

“It wasn’t me. I made it up. Just flat-out lied.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to impress you, I guess. And I’ve felt like a fraud ever since.”

“I don’t hate you,” she said, calm and kind. “You were nervous. It’s not the end of the world.”

You didn’t know what to say, so you nodded.

After a pause, she asked, “There’s a dance Friday night.”

You nodded again, unsure where this was going.

“You going?”

“Didn’t plan on it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like shaking my butt in public.”

“If you go, I’ll slow dance with you. First dance—promise?”

“Yeah,” you said, barely breathing. “Promise.”

And just like that, your Friday night was rewritten by the girl you once lied to—and who somehow still wanted to be your first dance.

You had Pumping Iron sprawled on your desk like a sacred text while the Canyon High freshmen trickled into Mrs. Hanson’s English Literature class, each one a fidgeting, hormonal catastrophe. Glossy black-and-white photos of muscle-bound gods glared back at you from the pages, but it was the image of Mr. Universe Franco Columbu, hanging upside down from a chin-up bar like a meaty bat, that you kept flipping to. The photo was blurry and distant—just obscure enough that only a true disciple of the iron church could identify Columbu.

Next to you sat Liz Murphy. Just last year, she was the gangly volleyball phenom from Earl Warren Junior High—the one the boys nicknamed “Giraffe,” “Horse,” or “Armadillo,” depending on the angle of cruelty. But over the summer, Liz had staged a Cinderella comeback. A Caribbean cruise had transformed her: her freckles softened into a copper glow, her limbs filled out like poetry, and her hair—now longer and looser—carried the faint scent of strawberries and ginger.

You turned to her and said, “Hey, wanna see a picture of a bodybuilder at the beach?”

She gave you a skeptical smile and leaned in.

“See that guy hanging upside down?” you said, pointing at the photograph.

“Holy smokes, he’s huge,” she said, staring wide-eyed.

“That’s me,” you replied.

She squinted, confused. “What?”

“That’s me. Can’t you tell?”

Her disbelief cracked just enough for hope to sneak in. “Oh my God… that’s you?”

You nodded with solemn authority. “Yep.”

And just like that, you slipped into your own fiction. You told her how you’d been visiting your grandparents in Los Angeles, hanging out with your bodybuilding pals at the beach, when someone snapped the photo. The lie came easy. Too easy. Her awe washed over you like warm sun, and for a few precious seconds, you felt seen. Not as the skinny kid you were—but as the chiseled hero you wanted to be.

But then came the stomach-drop. The gnawing guilt. What kind of person, even at fourteen, spins a story so absurd just to taste a few seconds of admiration? You didn’t know. But if you had to trace it back—to find the origin of the myth-making—you might start in the treehouse of your childhood, the one where humiliation planted its flag and never truly left.

On dry land, you were Captain America incarnate—at least in your own mind. A five-year-old freedom fighter in light-up sneakers, flexing your spaghetti arms to vanquish Red Skull stand-ins wherever they lurked. And in 1973, Kindergarten was your battlefield. The enemy? A kid named Teddy Heinrich, your neighbor at the Royal Lanai Apartments in San Jose—a cherubic little stormtrooper-in-training who strutted around with the smugness of a pint-sized Aryan poster child.

You had no idea you were Jewish, not consciously. But Teddy sure did. He made it his mission to educate you—mostly through Nazi memorabilia and unsolicited history lessons delivered between episodes of The Three Stooges and Superman, which you watched on his living room TV because your family didn’t have UHF. His parents were phantoms—always cloistered in the master bedroom, never cracking a smile, and dressed like they were auditioning for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

One day, Teddy gave you the grand tour of his family’s closet. Instead of a vacuum or winter coats, he pulled out his grandfather’s SS uniform—complete with a swastika armband, as if he were unveiling a treasured heirloom. “Check it out,” he said, beaming. “The greatest fighting machine the world has ever known.” His father peeked out from the shadows, nodded with ghostly approval, and slithered back into the bedroom.

You didn’t know what to make of it. Your Nazi education came exclusively from The Sound of Music, and even then, the swastikas were mostly an inconvenience to the yodeling.

Days later, under the hot California sun, you and Teddy were sprawled on the apartment lawn. He used his magnifying glass to torch a grotesque Jerusalem cricket, its alien limbs writhing in agony. You kicked it away, trying to save the poor thing, but Teddy doubled down—burning swastikas and “Nazi” into a wood block like a miniature war criminal with a hobby.

You started mimicking him, doodling swastikas like a deranged architect. When your mother caught you mid-sketch, she froze. “Where did you learn that?” You dropped Teddy’s name like a hot grenade.

She banned the symbols and told you they were evil. You nodded, swore to behave—and went right back to etching them at school, seduced by their sinister geometry.

Then came the day Teddy called you a “dumb Jew.”

You didn’t even know what the word meant. You just knew something flared in your chest like a lit fuse. In an instant, you were on top of him, pounding his freckled face into the grass. He didn’t fight back. He just took it—limp, passive, stunned. You clawed at his cheeks, turned them into raw hamburger. It was an out-of-body experience. You were rage. You were justice. You were five years old and seeing red.

You walked home calm, maybe even proud. An hour later, Teddy and his mother showed up at your door. She was full of righteous German fury. “Your son did this?” she said, pushing her bruised child forward like Exhibit A. “I almost had to take him to the hospital.”

Your mother, stunned, sent you to the kitchen. You listened from the other room as she said, “Did he really do all this?”

“Yes!” the woman barked. “Your son should not be allowed to play with mine anymore.”

Once they left, your mother turned to you. You explained the swastikas. The Nazi closet. The slur.

She didn’t ground you. She didn’t raise her voice. Instead, she nodded with a quiet, ancestral gravity—as if somewhere in the back of her mind, ghosts had nodded with her.

In her eyes, you weren’t a delinquent.

You were Captain America.