memoir, draft

"Yeah, you boys don’t know how good you got it" Ralph Sanchez leered mockingly to the boys huddled by the tailgate, not quite looking at them, but rather blankly observing the area behind them. They watched him stern-faced and cross-armed, all consciously and strenuously making an effort to repress anything that would reveal their puerile nature. Observe, imitate gestures, be quiet; They practiced this restraint not because the men would condemn them for being boyish, but instead because they would be ignored, causing their presence among the men to be regarded as trivial, which ultimately would leave them ostracized from the group. Eventually however, all of the boys would blurt out some platitude that would cause the men to look over callously at the boy who made the remark and then resume the story they were engaged in, leaving the boys no choice but to leave the group. But when Ralph Sanchez started to tell his story, the group meeting was still developing and the boys’ concentration on retaining acceptance in the group was at its peak.
"Yeah life was war back then. Every day was a battle. I was the type of fu**er who would just hit you without warning. I would say nothing at all. You don’t need to. If some punk comes around talkin’ shi* to me I’m gunna respond by fu**ing punching that fu**er in the throat." Ralph continued, amused at what he was saying, this time looking at the men leaned up against the side of the truck bed across from him. They had beers in their hands and were all gathered around a white truck, which was then surrounded by three other trucks on a slope over looking a baseball field.
Each of the stories started off the same way; the men would acknowledge the boys’ generation and (inaccurately) reduce their life to simply an existence of ease as if it was an insult to live without struggle. Once they had established this, they would tap into this sort of nirvana and would orate stories of their pasts, filtering out bad or mundane events, leaving only the fond, humorous events that glamorized growing up as a bold troublemaker or hoodlum. The men knew better but the boys were captivated, even envious and once they--after having interrupted the men’s stories with some trivial remark -- would leave the group, they would venture off into the dark fields and find a way to produce stories of their own.
"Growing up my dad liked to go to bars after work" this time Kennedy spoke a man with a soft voice, but angular and rigid features. "We would get phone calls late at night from the bartender telling us to come pick him up, cuz he was too drunk to drive. So me and my mom would get in the car and drive over to the bar so she could pick his car up. Well this one time, my dad was belligerent drunk……………….