My Dad Was Nearly James Bond

by Des Bishop

2

  My father always wanted to keep everybody happy because what everybody else thought of him was paramount. Even how he ended up raising his family in New York begins with him trying to please someone. After my parents married in New York in 1973 they returned to London, where my father had had a successful modelling career before moving to New York in 1969. In early 1975 my mother’s father, whom we later knew as Pop Pop, died. Soon after, my grandmother moved to London to be with my mom during her pregnancy (with me). My father loved my grandmother so much. For him she was the perfect woman – she was from West Cork, loved to drink and loved all my dad’s stories – and he would have done anything for her. She spent most of her time trying to get them to move back to New York. My mother was happy to stay in London for a while longer, but my nan worked on my dad. In the end he wanted to keep her happy and, though life was good on the King’s Road in Chelsea, I was brought back to Queens at three weeks of age, having been registered by my mother as an American Born Abroad with the US Embassy in London.

  We lived with Nanny until 1978. By then, both she and my father were members of Alcoholics Anonymous and they had very similar circles of friends. He was starting a new life and was getting to know the network of sober Irish in Queens, and these would be the people I would know as his best friends all my life.

  Aidan’s christening

  My brother Michael John was born during the blizzard of 1978. By that time my parents were looking for a place to live, and by the end of 1978 we had moved into the house that became our home on 47th Avenue and 188th Street in the Auburndale section of Flushing. Aidan came along in February 1980.

  My earliest memories of the house are of horrible green carpets and awful yellow paint. My father spent the next few years stripping paint from any bit of wood he could find. It was tough stripping away the bad taste of the 1970s, but by the time I was seven the house was all stained wood and white paint. My father would paint the walls of the world white if he could.

  I was not the child of a model or an actor, I was the son of a retail man. I now realize that as he entered his forties and settled into family life, my father faced the fear that ageing can bring to people who look good for a living. He had one child and the desire for more, and he knew that his work was not stable enough for the life he wanted to provide. The recession had kicked in and it was a hard time to find work, but he had connections in Barneys, the high-end Manhattan clothing store, because he had modelled their clothes many times. The manager in Barneys told him that the only position he had was folding garments and, without telling my mother, he took the job. He never admitted to her that he was starting in such a lowly position.

  He didn’t have to hide his inferior position for long and he quickly ended up a department manager in Barneys. He was still in Barneys when my parents bought our house on 188th Street. It was in Barneys also that he met a headhunter who would become a great friend of my parents and the man responsible for my dad’s retail career progressing. He encouraged my dad to keep going for bigger and better jobs, but after my dad eventually became general manager of another high-end Manhattan store, Burberrys, my mother made him promise that he would not change jobs again. All this change unsettled her, as my dad’s educational history was very skimpy, and as he progressed in retail he had pretended to have a better education than he actually had. They were both paranoid about this coming back to bite him if he pushed it too far.

  I assume he got caught up in the business of building a new career and was initially quite satisfied that he had progressed so quickly from such a lowly position. Later on in life he would see what he had achieved as not very impressive and would focus more on the life he left behind rather than the life he had created for his family.

  My earliest memories of my dad working are from his time in Abraham & Straus, a large department store out on Hempstead Turnpike in Nassau County, Long Island. He had a low-level management position there after being headhunted from Barneys. My dad hated it out there. It was a step too far from the city life he had known for so long. It was tough enough being a nine-to-five dude; being out in Long Island just made it worse. But he had been offered a manager’s job, so he took it as a stepping stone.

  Hempstead Turnpike was an eight-lane road, a classic suburban American boulevard created for a world where the car was king. Crossing it at a set of traffic lights was taking your life in your hands: pedestrians were intruders in the commuter world of Long Island. All along it was a world of small shopping malls with massive car parks. My dad did not have a driving licence and never drove, so we often went out to pick him up. We had a Plymouth Duster which was orange, so everyone thought it was the car from The Dukes of Hazzard.

  If my mother was not picking him up he had a tough journey home, as public transport was not great around there. It was probably a quarter-mile walk from A&S to the turnpike through a desolate car park. I can only imagine the thoughts he must have had out there in a world of cars during the long, hot, humid New York summers – the only one walking, the only one waiting for the bus, the only one who could not drive. He was a city man lost in the deep suburbs. He did not belong there among the franchise steakhouses and the Burger Kings. He was a stand-up guy lost in a drive-through world.

  He loved getting back to his boys though. When he came home we would beg him to play ‘Batman’. I don’t know why we called it Batman. I think Batman was on Saturday morning cartoons back then and we were big fans. The game had nothing to do with Batman, though. All we did was run at my dad, who was sitting on his bed, and he would flip us over, his head. Sometimes he could not do it because throughout his life he struggled with back pain caused by an accident when he was a young man. The more he threw us, the more we loved it. He may have regretted it because my parents’ bed would become our playground for the rest of our young lives. First it was the bat cave, later it was a trampoline, and eventually it became a World Wrestling Federation ring. Even worse for my parents’ bed: their dresser became the top rope and often we would jump high off it on to the bed, impersonating Jimmy Superfly Snuka and Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. I don’t think there was a day when one of us did not leave that room crying.

  We were his three boys. To Americans that’s kind of funny because there was a huge series in the 1960s called My Three Sons. We were happy to be those sons and we loved our dad being around. He would call me Dessie Doodle, Michael John was Mikey John and Aidan was Aidee Aid Aid. We were his three ‘scallywags’. We never knew what a scallywag was and neither did anyone else in the neighbourhood, but it was such a great word. It was the first thing many guys said to us when they came to my dad’s wake: ‘He always called me a scallywag. What the hell is it?’

  3

  When you are a kid you always think your dad is the coolest dad in the world. It turns out that we were not the only ones. At my dad’s wake I asked anyone who wanted to say a few words to come up. A friend of mine, Joe Lane, said he was always aware that Mr Bishop was different from the other dads because he was good-looking and always seemed interested in you. Even the kids in the area felt my father’s charm. My dad had that effect on everyone. He made everyone feel great.

  Most of the people I knew in St Kevin’s parish were white Catholics: mostly Italian and Irish Americans and some Greek Orthodox kids who had moved out from Astoria, Queens. There were other races too, but those three predominated. I would call it a working-class area now, but back then we were told that we were middle class. Americans don’t like the term ‘working class’; they might say ‘blue-collar’ instead. I think it would be fair to say our neighbourhood was bleached blue-collar, as many tradesmen in unions in New York did very well and had high standards of living while keeping a working-class sensibility. There were a lot of cops and firemen in our area too. There were also a lot of immigrants that we called ‘off the boat’. They spoke Italian and Greek in the house and the kids were bilingual. Off the boat was an important matter in our area bec
ause we all thought we were Irish or Italian or Greek. But really we were hyphens: Irish-Americans, Greek-Americans, Italian-Americans. But some people’s parents had no hyphens because they were off the boat. The genuine article.

  The Giourakis family would speak only Greek. You could hear their mother shouting from across the garage rooftops, ‘NIKO! GIANNI! ELEA THO!’ It means ‘Come here’ or ‘Come home’. We heard it every day. Angelo Messina’s mother struggles with English to this day. Every time I meet her I think she could have been off the boat yesterday. She always seemed to be cooking or hanging out laundry. ‘ANGELO, MANGI, MANGI!’ My friend P.J.’s mother had a bell and would ring it when it was time for his dinner – ‘COOOOOMMMMEE AND GET IT!’ – and he would run home like a cattle hand. His grandmother came over sometimes and I could not understand her when she was speaking Italian. My grandmother would come over and he could not understand her when she was speaking English because she never lost her West Cork accent. My nan spoke so fast it was like she was auctioning cattle. I don’t think she understood herself sometimes. The neighbourhood was so diverse and family orientated, it would had made the Statue of Liberty cry with pride.

  Our street was a row of mock-Tudor terraced houses without any back gardens. Instead there were communal driveways at the back which gave everyone access to their garages. We referred to them as ‘the alley’ even though we were talking about a few of them. The neighbourhood was criss-crossed by these alleyways, many of which could be accessed without crossing any streets. This was perfect for us kids because it created places to play with no traffic. Crossing the street was forbidden without permission for quite a long time, so I played in the three alleys that were accessible. These alleyways became a baseball field in the summer and a football field in the winter. Eventually my best friend and neighbour, Shannon Docherty, got a basketball hoop put up over her garage, and basketball also became a big game.

  We hid in the gaps between garages, made forts from the underside of porches where the garbage cans were stored; we climbed the roofs to get balls, we danced in the puddles left by the torrential summer thunderstorms even though our parents told us we would get polio. We turned stoops into ball games with new rules every day; we umpired our whiffle-ball games, refereed our two-hand touch football games and argued over every call. ‘You only got me with one hand, that’s bullshit.’ We drove Mr Benari crazy. He was the grumpy old man on the corner of 189th. He complained every day about the noise we made and even called the cops on us one time for playing in the street. But if you want to live around quiet kids, then don’t buy a house in Queens. We said he should live in a garbage can and we called him Oscar the Grouch.

  And we fought all the time. P. J. Puma was my other best friend, and any time we were together we were either playing or fighting. He was a year older than me so he always won the fights. Within ten minutes we would be friends again and I would continue to play with streaks down my dusty face where my tears had left their mark. I did not have to worry about ever actually winning a fight against P. J. because his sister was always beating him up because she was older. In the alley somebody older was always beating up someone younger. The beatings got passed down, like a hot potato of violence, but when I look back I can’t recall a single ounce of pain. We were all made of rubber.

  We didn’t worry about the sun, hydration, who hit who, falling, kidnapping or even germs. We would have eaten cookies we found on the ground if you kissed it up to God. We played outside all the time. Our parents never worried about where we were. When it was time for dinner they would shout or send some other kid to tell you that your mom said dinner was ready. A parent’s presence at the top of the alley was always ominous; it was the only thing we worried about. Mine would turn up a lot. I was often in trouble as I was a pretty hyper kid.

  My dad urging me on from the sidelines.

  We were all pretty hyper kids. Our generation of youngsters had a lot of freedom back then. There must have been thirty of us in our immediate area and we filled the place with energy, laughter and tears from sun-up to sun-down when we were not at school. When we got too old to play, the streets became much quieter because we were hiding – either getting drunk or making out.

  You could see the contrast between my dad and other dads really clearly on the sidelines of our soccer games on 73rd Avenue. There in a line of dads – lots of fat fathers in tracksuits and their wife-beater T-shirts – and then my dad in a tweed cap with an umbrella by his side. The Queens dads would shout, ‘Go get him, Carlos. Come on, offense!’ My dad would shout, ‘Watch your house, support him, unload it, get into space.’ The other coaches would say, ‘Just go out there and do your best.’ My father would say, ‘It’s a passing game, when not in possession get in position.’ He would often get into the car majorly annoyed by his perception of the American dad’s ignorance of football. ‘Hey, Michael John, what are they on about – “Double team him!” It’s not bloody basketball.’

  Although I was an average soccer player, my father suddenly decided, a few years after I had started playing, that I had a talent for goalkeeping. I think I was around seven or eight at the time. I can’t remember what I actually did, but I recall how everyone went on about how during a particular game I had saved a one-on-one breakaway. My dad was delighted and I was thrilled to have impressed him. Suddenly I was a star goalkeeper.

  My high standing did not last very long. Soon after that I faced a team that included one of my Italian classmates, Giancarlo Petrucelli. Giancarlo was the best player in our age group. Not only that, but he was really big. He had probably hit puberty by the age of seven – those Italians get hairy very early. Anyway, I was definitely afraid that day. I did not want to play in goal against Giancarlo, plain and simple. I must have moaned a lot, but in the end my father forced me to go in the goal.

  Nothing could stop Giancarlo. I think he scored two goals within the first five minutes. I said I felt sick and walked off. I can’t remember exactly what my father said, but it was something along the lines of calling me a baby in front of everyone who was there. My father very rarely blew his cool in front of other people – it was just not his way – so for him to show his anger publicly meant he was really pissed off. I was very embarrassed, but so was he. He did not want all the people who were watching the game seeing one of his boys being weak. With my dad it was all about the people who were watching.

  I wandered off towards the woods that bordered the soccer fields while the match continued. There was an abandoned tunnel under the Clearview Expressway near the soccer fields at Cunningham Park where we were playing. When I was a boy you had to go through the woods to get to it. It was full of garbage, covered in graffiti and quite scary to a boy. Though I didn’t know it then, this was the Vanderbilt Highway, a toll road created by the Vanderbilts to get the rich folk from their Long Island mansions back into New York City. It was made famous as the road that they use in The Great Gatsby to travel between the city and East Egg.

  I can still see myself walking to that place through those woods on the edge of the wilderness. I had no perception then that, a few streets away, there was an end to them. I thought I could get lost in them and never come out. I walk over the brown leaves that covered the path. I can hear them crackling under me, crispy and dead in the dry November cold. I can see my breath on the dark silver light. I can see myself sitting in the dark tunnel and listening to the echo of my voice and trying to make different noises. It is really scary here. It is really lonely but I don’t want to leave.

  The tunnel was a place to hide out after the disappointment of letting my father down. I felt real bad about that, but I also thought he was an asshole. I hated him at that moment. It was the first time I became aware of not liking my dad. Worse, though, I was so disappointed in myself. He was worried about what everybody else thought, but I was only worried about what he thought.

  My dad’s disgust and disappointment that day had a profound e
ffect on me. I never really played soccer after that. I definitely did not go back into goal ever. I would later realize that my dad was keen that we perform well in sports. He had been a sports star, so he expected the same from us. To the end of his life my dad would say that I could have been a brilliant ’keeper. There were too many ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves’ in my dad’s life.

  4

  My father began to speak openly about death very soon after his diagnosis. I think he thought he was dying during those first few days. He said that he wished a few times he would die because he was feeling so terrible. He began chemo almost straight away in the hospital, and though he had some side effects his condition began to improve.

  There must be something instinctual about accepting death, because he seemed to accept it more in his first few weeks of being sick than he did a year later, after much chemotherapy. In fact, in the end he refused to accept that he had no chance of beating the cancer. Thank God he didn’t give in to his first impulse to accept death, because we would never have had the extraordinary time we spent together.

  There is so much I could write about the amazing times I shared with my dad right after he got sick. Our family became extremely close around that period. There was an incredible love between all of us and I really enjoyed it, despite the illness and the sadness. I felt a terrible pity for my dad, at times seeing him uncomfortable in the hospital; but more than that I doted over him. He looked almost cute in his hospital bed and there was a baby-like sense about him; I just wanted to hug him and stare at him all the time.

  I used to love washing him in the hospital. There were so many lovely things about it. His gratitude was so flattering and so endearing. It was obvious that he felt much better after a good bed wash. It was a nice feeling for me to feel useful and be able to look after my family in this way. He would look over at my mother and say, ‘Isn’t this lovely, Eileen.’ Or look up at me and say, ‘I am so lucky to have sons like you.’