I lost my best friend, twice. The first time I lost him was when he died. The second time started after the funeral and hasn’t stopped since.
He was a popular guy, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He could barely speak. And when he did, you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was what you would call an impresario, a man of ideas, more artist than entrepreneur. Yet he was compelled by the mundane, which terrified him, because he was always broke.
I never took a penny from him. And to be fair, he never took one from me. We had a barter agreement. That’s what I call it, anyway. I’m not sure what he still owes, but I figure that we must be even. What he gave just cost more.
After he died, he finally became successful. When he was alive, he was incapable of quoting a price. He would run his finger around his collar, scratch the back of his neck, readjust his hat, clear his throat, light a cigarette. And by the time he got around to saying the number, it had a question mark - like he was asking you instead of telling you. Nobody in their right mind wanted to write him a check. But once he was dead, he had other people quoting prices. And they weren’t as bashful.
I never knew when my bell would ring, but it was usually a major holiday, which for me is always quiet. He would walk in and sit down like he was me – tired, wanting a little peace and quiet, maybe something to eat. Both of my wives loved him. So did my mother. My kids. Other times I would be in my underwear and the phone would ring. He was hungry. He needed to talk. There was a problem, usually with a girl. The idea that I wouldn’t put on my pants and turn on the grill never occurred to him. Me neither.
When he finally fell in love, we were all so happy. The girlfriend started to show up by his side on the odd evenings and major holidays, and she was one of the family. You rarely see people in love like that. And then she died. He was heartbroken, and began to show up at my house a lot more. And then he got sick, made himself sick, and he died too. The girlfriend got the mourners rolling, so he went out on a wave.
When he died they set on him like Greeks. He was suddenly the most popular guy in the world – think Van Gogh but with no paint. Or Jesus Christ – all legacy, few facts. The way they cried at the funeral made me wonder who the fuck all these people were. Where were they when he couldn’t get laid?
Now, everybody acts like his best friend. They share stories. One girl, who never slept with him despite what she’d like you to think, waved me away and said not to tell her a single thing about him, because she knew. What she didn’t know was that I distinctly remembered him telling me: I hate that fucking girl. She makes me sick and I want her out of my sight. Since he was dead, I guess he got his wish. So I didn’t say anything.
I feel robbed, and what’s worse, it’s hard to let go. I can’t even confess to missing him without the first person hearing it saying: me too. You too? You didn’t even know the fucking guy, and that goes for most people.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Farmer’s Wife
I tell people: pick from the bottom. The best should always come at the end, unless it’s track and field, in which case, you better not eat here. You should run into center city and take your chances.
I know a guy in Austria, a regular Nazi. Don’t get me wrong; he’s the nicest guy in the world. But if you get around to the Holocaust, you get the idea that he doesn’t think it was such a big deal. A lot of people died, all over Europe. I pursued the subject and I found out that he thinks the Jews somehow brought it upon themselves. So I think the conversation might seriously go awry, and so does he, so we were somehow off the subject before it got too weird. But then I thought; should I kill this guy?
The thing is, there was some business at hand. He’s got the pancetta I want, and I seriously want to tell him to run it back up the pig’s ass. But he’s like schlag, and I never get the chance. So I only bought half the bacon I came for, but that was a mistake. You never tasted pancetta like this. I confess I went back for more.
The next time I went, it was like he had something to prove. Far up in the mountains we met, at his gasthaus, where I have to admit, it was beautiful. I know Switzerland, and in the high Alps where the Italians meet the Austrians, there’s a lot of eating to be done in valleys so beautiful they make you want to scale the peaks, where there are even more restaurants, which serve canederli from God, so you have to go.
I realize that this guy is convinced that because I’m Italian we have something in common besides our love of pork. Naturally, that would be Fascism. What he doesn’t know is that I’m from Sicily and we don’t like Fascists. We can barely tolerate Democracy. So again, I’m thinking I should kill him, but his wife is a doll, his kids are gorgeous, and to tell you the truth, the guy looks exactly like me - but with lederhosen.
I remembered a time when I went back to Marsico, which is just like Sicily, only worse. It’s way up in the mountains in the shinbone of Lucania, where my mother's father was born. I was the first person from here to set foot there for over 100 years. It was like I never left. After a day of seeing my face on people all over town, I stopped to see the house from which my grandfather ran away – on a very sweet patch down in the valley.
I crossed the road and went into a bar. I was relieved to get out of town. I said to the barman that I was from here, though I didn’t have to tell him. Just look at me. Where? he asked. I jerked my thumb across the road. Marsico, I said. That house, right there. That’s not here, he answered.
So I thought that maybe I should just fuck the Nazi’s wife, which wouldn’t have been any big deal. He definitely had a peephole. And the wife was something else. Very fuckable. But she looked exactly like my sister. And besides, I don’t do that kind of thing. I wanted to punish the guy, not reward him. Even though it wouldn’t have mattered if I got her pregnant. The little bastard would fit right in. Then I’d have a Nazi in my family, which is all I need.
I know a guy in Austria, a regular Nazi. Don’t get me wrong; he’s the nicest guy in the world. But if you get around to the Holocaust, you get the idea that he doesn’t think it was such a big deal. A lot of people died, all over Europe. I pursued the subject and I found out that he thinks the Jews somehow brought it upon themselves. So I think the conversation might seriously go awry, and so does he, so we were somehow off the subject before it got too weird. But then I thought; should I kill this guy?
The thing is, there was some business at hand. He’s got the pancetta I want, and I seriously want to tell him to run it back up the pig’s ass. But he’s like schlag, and I never get the chance. So I only bought half the bacon I came for, but that was a mistake. You never tasted pancetta like this. I confess I went back for more.
The next time I went, it was like he had something to prove. Far up in the mountains we met, at his gasthaus, where I have to admit, it was beautiful. I know Switzerland, and in the high Alps where the Italians meet the Austrians, there’s a lot of eating to be done in valleys so beautiful they make you want to scale the peaks, where there are even more restaurants, which serve canederli from God, so you have to go.
I realize that this guy is convinced that because I’m Italian we have something in common besides our love of pork. Naturally, that would be Fascism. What he doesn’t know is that I’m from Sicily and we don’t like Fascists. We can barely tolerate Democracy. So again, I’m thinking I should kill him, but his wife is a doll, his kids are gorgeous, and to tell you the truth, the guy looks exactly like me - but with lederhosen.
I remembered a time when I went back to Marsico, which is just like Sicily, only worse. It’s way up in the mountains in the shinbone of Lucania, where my mother's father was born. I was the first person from here to set foot there for over 100 years. It was like I never left. After a day of seeing my face on people all over town, I stopped to see the house from which my grandfather ran away – on a very sweet patch down in the valley.
I crossed the road and went into a bar. I was relieved to get out of town. I said to the barman that I was from here, though I didn’t have to tell him. Just look at me. Where? he asked. I jerked my thumb across the road. Marsico, I said. That house, right there. That’s not here, he answered.
So I thought that maybe I should just fuck the Nazi’s wife, which wouldn’t have been any big deal. He definitely had a peephole. And the wife was something else. Very fuckable. But she looked exactly like my sister. And besides, I don’t do that kind of thing. I wanted to punish the guy, not reward him. Even though it wouldn’t have mattered if I got her pregnant. The little bastard would fit right in. Then I’d have a Nazi in my family, which is all I need.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Godfather
Everybody gets two. The first one they give you when you’re born, so he doesn’t count. The second one you pick for yourself, when you’re Confirmed, which is puberty by any other name. I picked my Uncle Joe, who was the Chief Engineer of the Polaris, which was the last big project down at the Navy Yard. He had a solid gold tie clip in the shape of a nuclear submarine.
Uncle Joe graduated Drexel in 1941 and spent the war in uniform making mechanical drawings and hitting on my mother’s sister. After they bombed Hiroshima, he signed on down at the Navy Yard because my aunt finally said yes and she had no intention of leaving the parish.
Like all of my mother’s sisters, my aunt married my uncle because he reminded her of her father. In Joe’s case, he had a lot going for him. First, he was named Joe, which half the other brothers–in-law were named, including my dad. Second, he was very handsome. After that, he was a brainiac - left and right. Not only could he trace a circuit through a million switches, he was also a man of culture. He had a thousand books. I had none.
On the day before my Confirmation he told me to bring the wagon I used for delivering newspapers over to his house, which he filled with books - so many, I had to tie them in - beautiful things, bound in leather, embossed in gold, all well read and precious upon arrival. I had a library from one minute to the next. Tom Brown’s School Days, The Pickwick Papers, Germinal. It was like somebody gave me a super power, a fortress of solitude, a world in which to live. However my mother beat the shit out of me, however bullied at school and trapped like a rat below Snyder Avenue, there was always something worse happening in London. And the endings weren’t bad. Even if they were, at least they ended.
Sitting on the steps with the other kids, who were comparing the Dave Clark Five to Herman’s Hermits, I wanted to talk about Kafka. This didn’t go over too well at first but after awhile, the girls started to think it was cute. But that was only half the battle. The boys really wanted to kill me. A few of them nearly got away with it. One kid broke my tooth after I quoted Somerset Maugham. A reference to Ethan Frome once got me kicked in the nuts. But no matter the provocation, I got no quarter from my brother, whose idea of a good book included most anything from Classics Illustrated and who wanted to kill me more than anybody else.
You would think it was impossible to bully me at school. You couldn’t walk through the schoolyard without seeing one cousin or another. Every third kid was bound by blood, and any one of them would have leaped to my defense but for my brother. In fact, whenever somebody had me down on the ground, beating my face, my brother would stand guard, waving my cousins away. They’re just playing, he would say.
I took the problem to my Godfather, who presented me with the problem in the first place. I went there to give him our portrait on the church steps - me in my white suit, he with his tie clip, taken with my brother’s box camera. Uncle Joe laughed out loud and made me tell him all the bullies by name. When I told him about Armando Battalotta, he said that no one would believe it. I moved on to Angelo DellaMorte. Enough, he shouted. Then he handed me another pile of books and sent me home.
Uncle Joe graduated Drexel in 1941 and spent the war in uniform making mechanical drawings and hitting on my mother’s sister. After they bombed Hiroshima, he signed on down at the Navy Yard because my aunt finally said yes and she had no intention of leaving the parish.
Like all of my mother’s sisters, my aunt married my uncle because he reminded her of her father. In Joe’s case, he had a lot going for him. First, he was named Joe, which half the other brothers–in-law were named, including my dad. Second, he was very handsome. After that, he was a brainiac - left and right. Not only could he trace a circuit through a million switches, he was also a man of culture. He had a thousand books. I had none.
On the day before my Confirmation he told me to bring the wagon I used for delivering newspapers over to his house, which he filled with books - so many, I had to tie them in - beautiful things, bound in leather, embossed in gold, all well read and precious upon arrival. I had a library from one minute to the next. Tom Brown’s School Days, The Pickwick Papers, Germinal. It was like somebody gave me a super power, a fortress of solitude, a world in which to live. However my mother beat the shit out of me, however bullied at school and trapped like a rat below Snyder Avenue, there was always something worse happening in London. And the endings weren’t bad. Even if they were, at least they ended.
Sitting on the steps with the other kids, who were comparing the Dave Clark Five to Herman’s Hermits, I wanted to talk about Kafka. This didn’t go over too well at first but after awhile, the girls started to think it was cute. But that was only half the battle. The boys really wanted to kill me. A few of them nearly got away with it. One kid broke my tooth after I quoted Somerset Maugham. A reference to Ethan Frome once got me kicked in the nuts. But no matter the provocation, I got no quarter from my brother, whose idea of a good book included most anything from Classics Illustrated and who wanted to kill me more than anybody else.
You would think it was impossible to bully me at school. You couldn’t walk through the schoolyard without seeing one cousin or another. Every third kid was bound by blood, and any one of them would have leaped to my defense but for my brother. In fact, whenever somebody had me down on the ground, beating my face, my brother would stand guard, waving my cousins away. They’re just playing, he would say.
I took the problem to my Godfather, who presented me with the problem in the first place. I went there to give him our portrait on the church steps - me in my white suit, he with his tie clip, taken with my brother’s box camera. Uncle Joe laughed out loud and made me tell him all the bullies by name. When I told him about Armando Battalotta, he said that no one would believe it. I moved on to Angelo DellaMorte. Enough, he shouted. Then he handed me another pile of books and sent me home.
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