am i scared of anything good in my life because i lost all the men i looked up to in my family at a very young age to slow painful deaths? sunday dinners in the basement at grandma and grandpas house, i would wake up to the smell of the 20 gallon silver sauce pot on the stove simmering for days. grandpa made the best sauce and it would always be ziti. uncle phil always sat at the head of the table. going to pop pops apartment on park ave and staring at the lifesize painting of his daughter leah in the living room. she commited suicide when i was a baby. that painting still creeps me out when i think about it. we would go to an italian resteraunt somewhere uptown, i have no clue where it was all i know is that i haven't had better spumoni since. pop pop died of alshiemers, grandpa died of lung cancer, uncle phil just disappeared.
sure i'll let people close to me, but i will never let them in. ill sit here and type my heart till there is no blood left to pump for the whole world to see but you come anywhere near me and i shut down. i was the youngest grandson, and the favorite. both my granfathers at one point and time looked at me and then asked my grandmothers who i was. i guess maybe that has a little something to do with something. i remember being so pissed at my real dad for not coming to his fathers funeral. but the truth is that if my father died tonight i wouldn't even think about shedding a light tear. i have never boo hoo'd about my life ever i've always played the hand i was delt the best i knew how. i;ve always been slightly reziliant with anything negative that popped up in my youth. i never understood how we could go visit my grandmother on the upper east side and eat at a fancy italian resteraunt, then drive through the lincoln tunnel back to our little apartment in the projects of garfield new jersey where we were on welfare. all my mom and my stepdad did was fight about money. i would look forward to easedropping on my mothers late night phone conversations in the kitchen cuz she would always tell whatever girlfriend she was on the phone with some pretty private shit. dad was a sound sleeper and aimee wasn't even born yet so she thought noone was listening. i would always leave my bedroom door open a crack so i could sit in my bed and listen. it always seemed like as the conversation would start getting really juicy a train would go by. not like a commuter train like one of those trains with 80 cars attatched to it and took forever to go by. i would get so pissed that i couldn't hear that i would start punching my pillow. i would do the same with there arguments in there bedroom. but what i loved the most was when she would talk about me and what fucked up thing i did this time. being the attention whore that i am i learned at a very early age that if you made people laugh or think you were crazy that they wouldn't really have any need to try and get close to you. you were just there for amusement purposes only and that was fine by me.
my grandmother got so drunk at pop pops wake that she started pulling her black dress up and mooning people. well i remember her mooning me at least. and when grandpa jim died grandma agnes was yelling at cars from the back of the limo that were ignoring the funeral precesion. there was no more sauce and no more spumoni. no more wet cheek kisses from uncle phil, no more whistling frank sinatra and dodging green and red lung cookies from the back seat of grandpas car, no more sitting on pop pops lapand driving around the circle driveway in the fire engine red alfa romeo convertible.
i was 16 and still avoiding my mom when i would come home stoned. one thanksgiving i got super baked with my friends and then had to go home for dinner. that was fine cuz the holidays were different. mom was always so busy cooking and getting buzzed on wine that i probably could have lit up a joint at the dinner table and she wouldn't have even noticed. what once used to be a big family deal was now reduced to maybe 5 or 6 people. the dining room table extensions stayed in the basement, and it was now just the ladies and my stepdad rick. grandma angela is a hairdresser in manhattan and has been since the 60's, so i was raised around gay people my entire life. frank and collin were a staple on the holidays. that shit never freaked me out cuz i was raised around it being ok. so i never even thought twice about it even when my friends would clown me for it. so i walk in to the house kinda paranoid, those were the days when we walked around with a plastic bristle brush in one back pocket, and a bottle of visine in the other. frank and collin have been around since before i knew what gay was. i walk up the steps gauging my eyes out with the pointy tip of the visine bottle, stop at the door and take a deep breath and prepare myself to listen to my mother and my grandmother fight over nothing, while frank and collin tried to intervene unsuccesfully, while my dad sits on the couch smoking his kool milds and watching the animal channel. i open the door and my mother is mixing something in a bowl in the kitchen. unfortunately for my completely roasted ass the kitchen was eyelined to the front door. (i think i just created a new way to say that word). my mom sees me and comes straight for me with this worried look on her face. right there i know im busted. she grabs my hand and walks me into her bedroom. fuck not only am i busted now im gonna get a sit on the bed lecture about how drugs r bad nnkay? she sits on the bed and grabs both my hands, her eyes fill up with tears as she proceeds to tell me frank has aids. why she couldn't wait till after dinner to tell me this i have no idea. my face starts getting hot and prickly, and all of the sudden i feel like im on acid.
she tells me not to say anything and to just pretend i don't know. all im thinking is how the fuck am i supposed to act like everything is ok? maybe now i could sure....but you have to understand this was 1987, and you couldn't even say the word aids on tv yet. but this wasn't my first run in with this, like i said my grandmother cuts hair in midtown manhattan. jay died of "phenemonia" in 1985. and my moms best friend from high school and famous classical pianist joseph villa died of aids shortly after jay....
mom goes back into the kitchen and i go into my room. i want to cry but i can't, it hasn't really sunk in yet. dinner is finally ready and it's time to stop hiding in my room. this wave of information has put me completely on tilt and im baked out of my skull. pot up until just recently has done nothing but make me think to much and i used to get really insecure and paranoid. i sit down at the table and like i said, the family has dwindled down to almost nothing. it was me, mom, dad, aimee, grandma, frank and collin, and my moms best friend marylou who apparently my stepdad was fucking (but we didn't find this out till years later). i can't even look up at him. everyone is talking and carrying on like nothing was wrong. im afraid to look up in fear of seeing a legion on his face or something. eventually after almost 30 minutes of me pushing my food around my plate frank looks me dead in the eye and says "so hows school jason? everything ok with you?". i tried to swallow the light bulb size knot in my throat and answer him but i was so freaked out and stoned i just said "im cool"...the whole time he's looking at me i'm thinking that he must know that i know. aids was so new and there was so little information about it that i just kept looking at the silverware he was using, and if he was coughing at all. i tilted my way through dinner and called billy my best friend in high school to come get me. when billy came i said goodbye to everyone and frank got up to hug me. physically i made everything look fine but mentally i fucking freaked out. i hugged him anyway, put on my denim jacket with the twisted sister pin, flat ironed my mullet a little more and flew downstairs to billy's car.
billy and his family were born again christians or something to that affect. they didn't have tv cuz it was evil, and went to church 3 times on sunday. when i told him what happened he said "see??? god is punishing him for being gay..". i wanted to punch him in the throat but since he was driving i let it go. billy was always saying dumb god shit like that anyway so we were all used to it. one time he was having a god freak out while cruising me and john roth around carlstadt one rainy schoolnight. john had a joint and we were trying to get billy to smoke with us. he just kept saying "i don't know guys this is so wrong. i don't want to go to hell". poor kids mother had him so freaked out im suprised his head hasn't exploded by now. especially with the crew we ran with. we were always drinking, or on acid, or banging someones sister, or all three at the same time. and billy would always freak, especially when we took acid...jesus christ....sometimes we would be so fucked up that he would start making sense and scare the shit out of all of us. like the rainy night when we were trying to get him to smoke. we were driving up my street. it had been pouring all day and now it was just a light drizzle, but it wasn't a thunderstorm it just rained all day. there wasn't a flash of lightning or a rumble of the clouds all day.. we were nagging him for like 15 minutes straight to get stoned. finally he grabs the joint all mad and says "fine you want me to go to hell ill go to fucking hell give me the joint!!". i swear on my mothers eyes we were coming to the top of central ave which was a really steep hill and as soon as we started to come over the top of the hill he put the joint in his mouth. from the back seat i reached over with my lighter, and with my evil peer pressure tone i said "yeeeah thats my boy" and lit the lighter. at the same time i lit the lighter a bolt of lightning came down and hit the tree right in front of us. billy slammed on the brakes and threw it in park. me and john were out of the car running down the hill screaming before he even stopped the car. none of us smoked weed for like 3 or 4 days after that, and i think i almost went to church with billy and his family that sunday morning. we were also a half a block away from the cop shop when it happened so seeing three 16 year old kids stoned out of there gourds running past the cops screaming at full volume was pretty amusing im sure....that thanksgiving was also the last time i saw frank. collin never got aids and now it's collin and victor...not frank and collin....billy now lives somewhere in south jersey, heard he got married, has a kid, and drives a poland spring truck or some shit....i haven't spoken to him in over ten years....
sure i'll let people close to me, but i will never let them in. ill sit here and type my heart till there is no blood left to pump for the whole world to see but you come anywhere near me and i shut down. i was the youngest grandson, and the favorite. both my granfathers at one point and time looked at me and then asked my grandmothers who i was. i guess maybe that has a little something to do with something. i remember being so pissed at my real dad for not coming to his fathers funeral. but the truth is that if my father died tonight i wouldn't even think about shedding a light tear. i have never boo hoo'd about my life ever i've always played the hand i was delt the best i knew how. i;ve always been slightly reziliant with anything negative that popped up in my youth. i never understood how we could go visit my grandmother on the upper east side and eat at a fancy italian resteraunt, then drive through the lincoln tunnel back to our little apartment in the projects of garfield new jersey where we were on welfare. all my mom and my stepdad did was fight about money. i would look forward to easedropping on my mothers late night phone conversations in the kitchen cuz she would always tell whatever girlfriend she was on the phone with some pretty private shit. dad was a sound sleeper and aimee wasn't even born yet so she thought noone was listening. i would always leave my bedroom door open a crack so i could sit in my bed and listen. it always seemed like as the conversation would start getting really juicy a train would go by. not like a commuter train like one of those trains with 80 cars attatched to it and took forever to go by. i would get so pissed that i couldn't hear that i would start punching my pillow. i would do the same with there arguments in there bedroom. but what i loved the most was when she would talk about me and what fucked up thing i did this time. being the attention whore that i am i learned at a very early age that if you made people laugh or think you were crazy that they wouldn't really have any need to try and get close to you. you were just there for amusement purposes only and that was fine by me.
my grandmother got so drunk at pop pops wake that she started pulling her black dress up and mooning people. well i remember her mooning me at least. and when grandpa jim died grandma agnes was yelling at cars from the back of the limo that were ignoring the funeral precesion. there was no more sauce and no more spumoni. no more wet cheek kisses from uncle phil, no more whistling frank sinatra and dodging green and red lung cookies from the back seat of grandpas car, no more sitting on pop pops lapand driving around the circle driveway in the fire engine red alfa romeo convertible.
i was 16 and still avoiding my mom when i would come home stoned. one thanksgiving i got super baked with my friends and then had to go home for dinner. that was fine cuz the holidays were different. mom was always so busy cooking and getting buzzed on wine that i probably could have lit up a joint at the dinner table and she wouldn't have even noticed. what once used to be a big family deal was now reduced to maybe 5 or 6 people. the dining room table extensions stayed in the basement, and it was now just the ladies and my stepdad rick. grandma angela is a hairdresser in manhattan and has been since the 60's, so i was raised around gay people my entire life. frank and collin were a staple on the holidays. that shit never freaked me out cuz i was raised around it being ok. so i never even thought twice about it even when my friends would clown me for it. so i walk in to the house kinda paranoid, those were the days when we walked around with a plastic bristle brush in one back pocket, and a bottle of visine in the other. frank and collin have been around since before i knew what gay was. i walk up the steps gauging my eyes out with the pointy tip of the visine bottle, stop at the door and take a deep breath and prepare myself to listen to my mother and my grandmother fight over nothing, while frank and collin tried to intervene unsuccesfully, while my dad sits on the couch smoking his kool milds and watching the animal channel. i open the door and my mother is mixing something in a bowl in the kitchen. unfortunately for my completely roasted ass the kitchen was eyelined to the front door. (i think i just created a new way to say that word). my mom sees me and comes straight for me with this worried look on her face. right there i know im busted. she grabs my hand and walks me into her bedroom. fuck not only am i busted now im gonna get a sit on the bed lecture about how drugs r bad nnkay? she sits on the bed and grabs both my hands, her eyes fill up with tears as she proceeds to tell me frank has aids. why she couldn't wait till after dinner to tell me this i have no idea. my face starts getting hot and prickly, and all of the sudden i feel like im on acid.
she tells me not to say anything and to just pretend i don't know. all im thinking is how the fuck am i supposed to act like everything is ok? maybe now i could sure....but you have to understand this was 1987, and you couldn't even say the word aids on tv yet. but this wasn't my first run in with this, like i said my grandmother cuts hair in midtown manhattan. jay died of "phenemonia" in 1985. and my moms best friend from high school and famous classical pianist joseph villa died of aids shortly after jay....
mom goes back into the kitchen and i go into my room. i want to cry but i can't, it hasn't really sunk in yet. dinner is finally ready and it's time to stop hiding in my room. this wave of information has put me completely on tilt and im baked out of my skull. pot up until just recently has done nothing but make me think to much and i used to get really insecure and paranoid. i sit down at the table and like i said, the family has dwindled down to almost nothing. it was me, mom, dad, aimee, grandma, frank and collin, and my moms best friend marylou who apparently my stepdad was fucking (but we didn't find this out till years later). i can't even look up at him. everyone is talking and carrying on like nothing was wrong. im afraid to look up in fear of seeing a legion on his face or something. eventually after almost 30 minutes of me pushing my food around my plate frank looks me dead in the eye and says "so hows school jason? everything ok with you?". i tried to swallow the light bulb size knot in my throat and answer him but i was so freaked out and stoned i just said "im cool"...the whole time he's looking at me i'm thinking that he must know that i know. aids was so new and there was so little information about it that i just kept looking at the silverware he was using, and if he was coughing at all. i tilted my way through dinner and called billy my best friend in high school to come get me. when billy came i said goodbye to everyone and frank got up to hug me. physically i made everything look fine but mentally i fucking freaked out. i hugged him anyway, put on my denim jacket with the twisted sister pin, flat ironed my mullet a little more and flew downstairs to billy's car.
billy and his family were born again christians or something to that affect. they didn't have tv cuz it was evil, and went to church 3 times on sunday. when i told him what happened he said "see??? god is punishing him for being gay..". i wanted to punch him in the throat but since he was driving i let it go. billy was always saying dumb god shit like that anyway so we were all used to it. one time he was having a god freak out while cruising me and john roth around carlstadt one rainy schoolnight. john had a joint and we were trying to get billy to smoke with us. he just kept saying "i don't know guys this is so wrong. i don't want to go to hell". poor kids mother had him so freaked out im suprised his head hasn't exploded by now. especially with the crew we ran with. we were always drinking, or on acid, or banging someones sister, or all three at the same time. and billy would always freak, especially when we took acid...jesus christ....sometimes we would be so fucked up that he would start making sense and scare the shit out of all of us. like the rainy night when we were trying to get him to smoke. we were driving up my street. it had been pouring all day and now it was just a light drizzle, but it wasn't a thunderstorm it just rained all day. there wasn't a flash of lightning or a rumble of the clouds all day.. we were nagging him for like 15 minutes straight to get stoned. finally he grabs the joint all mad and says "fine you want me to go to hell ill go to fucking hell give me the joint!!". i swear on my mothers eyes we were coming to the top of central ave which was a really steep hill and as soon as we started to come over the top of the hill he put the joint in his mouth. from the back seat i reached over with my lighter, and with my evil peer pressure tone i said "yeeeah thats my boy" and lit the lighter. at the same time i lit the lighter a bolt of lightning came down and hit the tree right in front of us. billy slammed on the brakes and threw it in park. me and john were out of the car running down the hill screaming before he even stopped the car. none of us smoked weed for like 3 or 4 days after that, and i think i almost went to church with billy and his family that sunday morning. we were also a half a block away from the cop shop when it happened so seeing three 16 year old kids stoned out of there gourds running past the cops screaming at full volume was pretty amusing im sure....that thanksgiving was also the last time i saw frank. collin never got aids and now it's collin and victor...not frank and collin....billy now lives somewhere in south jersey, heard he got married, has a kid, and drives a poland spring truck or some shit....i haven't spoken to him in over ten years....
this is great, i love your writing.
ReplyDeletefantastic. keep going.
ReplyDeletenice piece, more like this! So visual, loved it
ReplyDelete