Fred Wemyss

We moved here just before I started Kindergarten. I've always felt like a foreigner, although the move was only from Manhattan to Long Island. At the age of five I felt the closing of ranks against me as the other boys in school literally walked, a few times, in sets of three or four, with their arms resting on each other's shoulders. What was bonding to them was, to my eyes, which dared not meet theirs, an expression of defiance. All of them were neighbors living within two blocks of the school. I lived a mile away.
I didn't make a friend until the tale end of second grade, when I, sitting on one end of a see-saw, the other side of which was tilted upward without an occupant, heard a voice which asked, "Can I see-saw with you?"
This was Henry, who'd just moved to town. He was tall, I was small. He began to climb the see-saw after I said, "O. K.," and, just as he got on, the same three boys who'd walked around in a phalanx two years before called out to him.
"You don't want to play with Worms!" My last name, "Wemyss," is pronounced "Weemz," hence Worms was the logical distortion.
"Why not?" said Henry.
"Come on and play kickball with us."
"No, I want to see-saw."
"Not with him! Come on, play kickball."
"No."
At this, one of them said, "We'll never play with you."
Henry said, "O. K."
They waved him off. Henry never played with them. He and I became friends.
I gained another friend in third grade. It was another boy named Henry, also tall. He came from Queens, where he'd gone to a Catholic school. Starting third grade, he'd had no prior experience of me. We had the same bus stop. I used to stay about six yards away from the group clustered at the stop and, after after a few weeks, this Henry called to me. "Stand with us!"
found I was able to talk with some of the others with Henry standing there.
I still would start the wait at the bus stop a little way off from the crowd and Henry would appear. I'd walk toward them. He met me halfway once. "Don't hold your books like that," he said in a low voice. "Hold them like this."
Henry had his books at his side. I had mine in front of me, as if I were carring a bag of laundry."
I shifted my books to the side. "But they're too heavy to hold with one hand," I said.
"That's holding them like a girl," said Henry.
Sensing a route to acceptance, I kept the books at my side.
The Henrys didn't like each other. Whichever one would call me first on a Saturday morning was the one I'd play with that day.
One time, in class, the newer Henry once threw a new pencil I'd showed him across the room. "Copycat," he cried. I had bought the sleek lead pencil after seeing the one he had. It was the same color, a shade of blue I'd thought very masculine. The first Henry told me that this Henry was cruel. When I bought a replacement pencil I kept it at home. It was the same blue.
I did befriend someone my height once. He moved in in fourth grade. He wasn't named Henry. He introduced me to the WHITE ALBUM, which had just come out. He used to kick me, very suddenly, between my legs and laugh endlessly. One day my brother told me I should fight back. My newest friend shoved me for some reason. I simply walked to the other room. My brother, who was standing there, said, "Fight back or he'll never stop." I reluctantly went back into the room. My friend pointed his chin at me, shoved me harder and I took my knuckles and rapped him once, on top of the head.
He let out an agonized noise to match his twisted expression. He called his mother and she picked him up. He didn't play with me again for a few weeks.
I had a birthday party once and invited Henry, Henry and the friend who used to kick me in the crotch. I also invited two members of the gang of three who'd walked around en masse in Kindergarten. My mother drove us to Coney Island.
Afterward my original friend Henry said I should stop trying to get everybody together.
I only keep in touch with him now.
The other Henry told me, at our last meeting, that if I didn't visit him and another mutual friend at their post-collegiate dwelling in Manhattan that "this will be your last chance."
I run into the ball-kicker every now and then and we talk about the Beatles.
I did have someone who almost became a friend just before I met the first Henry. We'd play on the see-saw and see-saw faster and fast, shouting bump game. I jumped off once, causing him to smash on the ground. I did that to him again. The second time he got back up and slowly walked toward the kickball field.