Sometime before morning, while Papa and his wife slept, he heard the key slip into the lock and the dead bolt slide open. Frankie helped him out of his soiled pants and socks and shoes and handed him a towel to wrap around his waist, preserving his modesty as they climbed the stairs. He stood Michael in the shower and Michael didn’t complain or resist when his brother put him to bed like he had when he was still young enough for bedtime stories. He turned his face to the wall, angry and humiliated, and muttered promises of revenge that Frankie pretended not to hear.
MICHAEL, 1976
“Where did you get that book?”
Father Parisi was horrified to discover Michael with his nose buried in such blasphemous atheist propaganda as Lord of the Flies.
“Do you know who the Lord of the Flies is? I didn’t think so. The Lord of the Flies is Beelzebub! It’s the devil, Michael!”
The old man threatened to report the local librarian who’d suggested this trash to an impressionable young reader who was quickly bored by the childish books on the middle school recommended summer reading list. God created man in his own image, the priest lectured. A creature born with a soul isn’t a savage driven by murder and bloodlust.
“I won’t tell your father about this if you hand that over so I can return it in the morning. And I want you to say an Act of Contrition. Now this was one of my favorites when I was boy,” he said, pressing an ancient copy of Ben-Hur into Michael’s hands.
Michael took Father Parisi’s book to bed with him that night, reading the same three dull paragraphs over and over. He closed the cover and turned out the lights. In the morning he would cross Broad Street to a different branch of the Free Library and check out another copy of Lord of the Flies. He would be more careful this time, hiding the book even from Frankie, who believed every word from that creepy old priest’s mouth. Back when Papa was married to Miss Eileen and he and Frankie were forced to sleep at the rectory every Saturday night, the priest always insisted “his handsome boys” pose for a photograph on Sunday morning. Michael never smiled for the camera, feeling awkward and not knowing why he felt naked while the priest snapped the picture. Frankie defended Father Parisi if Michael called him weird or complained about the frequent outings to amusement parks and state parks, insisting they should be grateful for his generosity.
He read the forbidden book in secret, shoving it between his mattress and box springs when he heard Frankie’s footsteps approaching their bedroom. The dilemma of the story troubled him. What would he do if he were stuck on a desert island? Would he follow the rules he’d been taught when there was no one to impose them or would he paint his face and run wild, turning into a scary savage? He liked some of the other books on the advanced reading list, Dracula, The Red Pony, and especially The Outsiders. Others he couldn’t finish, like Wuthering Heights. But Ralph and Jack haunted him the rest of the summer, never far from his mind. Was he the brave young hero rescued by the naval officer on the beach or was he the villain, standing abashed, wearing a tattered black hat and a pair of broken specs around his waist? He’d just turned eleven and was still naïve and impressionable, too young to comprehend that he, like all men, was both, and that life would eventually reveal the best and worst in him.
FRANKIE, 1977
Mr. Montesserri was known to be generous to his young assistants, a succession of pretty, effeminate St. Philip Neri High School boys he hired to help the overworked staff at Montesserri’s Creative Floral Designs. He took a special interest in fair-haired boys with blue eyes. Frankie always seemed to be assigned to jobs old Mr. Montesserri was personally supervising. That night had been a particularly stressful engagement. The wedding of the goddaughter of the fearsome capo Philip “Chicken Man” Testa to the son and heir of New Jersey’s largest cement contractor had required bouquets and boutonnieres for a bridal party of twenty-two and centerpieces for tables to seat the guest list of five hundred. Afterward, Mr. Montesserri insisted on a “special celebration” for select members of the team. Carlo Cesa, Michael Stupak, Johnny Caprogimo, handsome young Patrick Ryan, blessed with long eyelashes and thumbprint dimples, and Frankie. Frankie was both excited and terrified by the idea of actually entering a gay bar. He didn’t need to worry that Papa would be standing at the door when he returned in the middle of the night since he and Frannie Merlino had gone to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend a Merlino family christening. And Michael wasn’t home because Papa had sent him to Sal Pinto’s overnight, insisting his irresponsible twelve-year-old son would burn down the house if left on his own.
“Welcome to the Sisterhood,” Patrick whispered in Frankie’s ear as they swept past the doorman at Equus, greeted like arriving royalty, without even a cursory glance at the ID of the sweet-faced seventeen-year-old.
The Sisterhood formed a protective half-circle around Frankie as he sat at the bar, their sharp elbows discouraging any besotted drunken queen from approaching their young charge. Frankie sipped the sweet rum and Coke through a swizzle stick, shyly averting his eyes from the lascivious stares of the supplicants who approached Mr. Montesserri. The florist had changed from his dark tailored dress suit into a mint-green jumpsuit unzipped to the navel and was holding court, looking regal as he accepted tributes. Frankie shrank behind Patrick Ryan’s broad back as an aggressive older gentleman slipped through the human barricade, angling for an introduction.
“Wanna dance, Frankie?” Patrick asked.
Mr. Montesserri gave his blessing, trusting Patrick to protect Frankie from the pack of starving wolves eager to sink their teeth into such an alluring piece of fresh meat. Frankie’s knees wobbled as Patrick picked up his hand and led him to the dance floor. They wandered into the crush of sweating bodies, dodging stamping feet and flailing arms, finally reaching a small pocket of space that felt almost like solitude. Patrick lifted his arms above his head and swayed to the music, encouraging Frankie to do the same.
San Francisco! SAN! FRAN! CIS! CO!
Frankie was shy and self-conscious, fearing that all these incredibly handsome men, more than he had ever seen in one place, were watching him. But no one seemed aware of him; they were all lost in their own private worlds, their faces transfixed by some kind of religious euphoria. The pounding bass lines rocking the floor beneath the soles of his feet charged him with energy. The music swallowed him up. He squinted into the piercing strobe lights, mesmerized by the spinning colors of the laser beams that swept across the room. Patrick wrapped his arms around Frankie’s back and nuzzled his neck, shouting above the deafening din of the Village People.
“You are so fucking beautiful. You know that, don’t you?” he asked as he led Frankie off the dance floor, pushing and prodding him through the crowd. He motioned for Frankie to follow him into a small bathroom behind the bar, kicked the door shut, and locked it.
“Here, do some of this,” he said, showing Frankie how to snort a line of white powder through the tip of a swizzle stick. “Go ahead. Don’t be a pussy.”
Frankie inhaled and held his breath, just like Patrick told him. He felt like he was collapsing in on himself, but in a good way, as if he were a warm puddle slowly spreading across a glass floor. Patrick unbuckled Frankie’s belt and pulled his pants and underwear to his ankles. Then he spit into his hand, promising Frankie it would only hurt when he put it in, then it would feel really good. The sharp pain in Frankie’s ass surprised him, but subsided quickly, as Patrick urged him to relax. It was a strange feeling, a fullness, an urgent, not unpleasant, sensation, like having to go to the bathroom. Someone was pounding on the door, shouting, demanding to know what they were doing and why it was taking so long.
“Go the fuck away,” Patrick shouted, grunting harshly, then collapsing onto the toilet. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, leaving Frankie standing there, with Patrick’s semen dripping down the back of his thighs.
“Are you okay?” Patrick finally asked as he thoughtfully wiped Frankie’s tender butt with a wet paper towel.
“Yes,
” Frankie said, confused by surging waves of conflicting emotions, assuming this was how you were supposed to feel when you first fell in love.
“Don’t tell Montesserri about this, okay?” Patrick asked, sounding younger than his twenty-one years.
“I won’t.”
“You’re a good kid, Frankie.” Patrick smiled as he slipped out of the cramped bathroom, closing the door behind him. “See you around.”
Mr. Montesserri was sipping from a tall glass as Frankie approached him self-consciously, fearing it would be obvious to the old man and everyone else what Patrick had just done to him.
“Are you having fun, Frankie?”
“Sure.”
“Go dance. Burn off some of that energy. It will be last call soon.”
Emboldened by the cocaine, Frankie pushed his way through the tangle of sweaty, bare-chested men on the dance floor, drawn toward the spinning mirror ball in the center of the room. He tried resisting, then finally surrendered to their groping hands, melting into the music, disappearing, snakebitten by the voice of an angel chanting oh, love to love you baby.
MICHAEL, 1977
Papa and Frannie Merlino needed a little privacy after six days and five nights with two adolescent boys in a cramped and stuffy vacation trailer in a Virginia oyster village. Papa gave Frankie the keys to the Oldsmobile, warning him he’d written down the mileage on the odometer and knew the exact distance to the drive-in across the causeway. Michael, who’d already seen Star Wars twice in the city, was obsessed with the rebels of the Galactic Empire, but Frankie was bored by the adventures of the Jedi warriors after an hour. He told his little brother he was going for popcorn and Cokes and to lock the doors until he came back. When he didn’t return by the time the credits rolled and the cars began snaking toward the exit, Michael, emboldened by the courage of young Luke Skywalker, went searching for him.
The young girl bagging trash at the concession stand mumbled that the counter was closed, the movie over. She laughed when Michael said he’d lost his brother, commiserating that her own had gone AWOL and left her with all the cleanup chores.
“Tell him I’m tired and want to go home if you see him,” she called after him as she dragged the trash bags out to the cans. “He’s got red hair so you’ll know it’s him.”
He wandered toward a distant copse of pines, unnerved by the croaking tree frogs, and called Frankie’s name softly. Deer flies nipped his bare legs, drawing blood, and he stepped into a sinkhole, his shoe sucked into the muck. He stumbled through the brush, tripping over a tangled knot of vines, and fell to his knees in a shallow pool of water.
On the far bank, two figures were draped in deep shadows, one crouched over the trunk of a fallen tree, the other naked from the waist down, the bright light of the full moon flashing across his bare white buttocks. At first he thought Frankie was in danger, that he was groaning in pain and needed a hero to rescue him. Then, frightened and confused, Michael turned and raced back to the car, running from the sound of his brother’s voice begging the grunting red-haired boy to keep going, not to stop, telling him how good it felt.
“Sorry, I got lost,” Frankie apologized when he finally returned, tossing Michael a box of Good & Plenty, insisting they stop at Dairy Queen for banana splits on the way home.
In the morning, they sat facing each other at the tiny table in the trailer, eating coffee cake out of an Entenmann’s box. Frankie acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened the previous night. Michael was unusually quiet, tentative, unable to find the courage to speak.
“What’s the matter, Mikey? Something’s bothering you. I can always tell.”
Just last month, he’d punched Phil DeStefano in the face and knocked Junior Curcio on his ass when they mocked Frankie and taunted Michael, saying he would grow up to be a fag like his brother, who let guys put their dicks in his mouth. Everyone knows it, Mikey. It must be weird living with a queer. He defended his brother from the ugly rumors, even though he worried they were true. Carl Shevchek had put his dick in Frankie’s mouth, but only because Carl was as strong as he was stupid and had easily overpowered him. It didn’t mean Frankie was a homo. Michael had asked Sal Pinto how you could tell if someone was a fag (a question he could never ask Papa). His godfather minced across the room, swinging his arm as if he were twirling a purse.
That’s how you tell if someone is a leccacazzi!
Frankie didn’t walk like that, but he did carry his schoolbooks like a girl, clutching them to his chest. Sometimes he would cross his leg at the knee and Papa would blow up, demanding he sit like a man with both feet flat on the floor.
“Frankie, do you know that guy?” he mumbled as he picked at the coffee cake.
“What guy?” Frankie asked, curious, offering Michael the last of the pastry.
“The red-haired guy at the drive-in.”
“What red-haired guy at the drive-in?” he asked, crushing the empty box and tossing it in the trash.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Never mind.”
“Papa said we can have the car tonight. Do you want to see Star Wars again?”
“Sure,” he said, without any great enthusiasm, knowing Frankie secretly planned to slip away again tonight. Now that he knew the things people said about Frankie were true, everything felt different. Nothing was the same. He wanted Frankie to be the brother he had been before he changed, the one he’d run to with every bruise and cut, who taught him how to tie his shoes and pee like a man, who read him Go, Dog. Go! so many times he’d memorized the entire book, who let him crawl into his bed when he was afraid of the dark, who promised to never go away and leave him alone. He didn’t want to believe Frankie hadn’t changed and he’d always been a homo. And maybe those idiots DeStefano and Curcio were right and Michael was a homo, too, and just didn’t know it yet.
FRANKIE AND MICHAEL, 1978
“Night Fever” was the theme of Frankie’s senior prom. He was the chair of the decorating committee, of course. The “night” part, at least, was easy. He’d designed a billowy sky of bedsheets dyed a deep indigo. The janitor bitched about hanging four dozen foil stars from the gymnasium ceiling. Frankie painted the cutout of the smirking Man in the Moon (without, of course, the cocaine spoon) he’d seen in photographs of Diana Ross and Liza dancing at Studio 54. Mr. Montesserri had helped him find a real mirror ball and knew a designer willing to lend him revolving color wheels to illuminate the fantasy sky.
Everyone agreed Frankie had done a beautiful job. Even Jack Centafore, the only St. Philip Neri senior who couldn’t find a girl to agree to be his prom date. Frankie had his choice of young women, being the best-looking boy in his class. Every girl without a steady boyfriend was willing to enter the gymnasium on his arm. She knew not to expect any romance beyond a chaste kiss good night and that he wouldn’t beg for a blow job like the louts doing shots in the boys’ room. But Frankie would look wonderful in the prom photos. Years later, she could prove to her skeptical daughters that she had indeed been taken to the prom by the most handsome young man in South Philadelphia, a boy who ought to have been a movie star.
Frankie slept late the morning of the prom, waking in a deep funk, dreading the dance. He had asked Cecilia Forte, a girl burdened by extra pounds and a homely face, who could have never dreamed of going to the prom if Frankie hadn’t been kind-hearted, with a weakness for misfits. Cecilia was funny and smart and had won a scholarship to Smith College, where she was going to major in journalism and follow in the footsteps of her idol Barbara Walters. But he longed for what he could never have. Paul Ottaviano, who in a few hours would be crowned Prom King, would never sweep Frankie up in his arms and lead him around the dance floor to the lush chords of “More Than a Woman.”
“Don’t think I’m going to fix you anything at this late hour. If you want breakfast get out of bed with everyone else,” Frannie Merlino snapped when he finally wandered into the kitchen.
He was resigned to the misery of life with Frannie Mer
lino. He’d learned to accept her as his punishment for the awful way he’d treated Miss Eileen, who had loved Frankie and Michael as if they were her own sons. He could have had a second mother for a few years at least if only he had allowed himself to love her back.
Michael was still hanging around the house, which was unusual for him on a beautiful spring morning. He spent as little time as possible under Papa’s roof lately, but he’d been waiting hours for Frankie to get out of bed, needing his brother’s opinion on an important decision he had made.
“Do you think it’s okay? Is it good enough? Do you think I should take it back and buy her something else?”
Michael rarely confided in Frankie anymore and never asked his advice.
Frankie made a thoughtful appraisal and asked several pertinent questions before passing judgment.
“Are you sure she has a charm bracelet?”
Of course he would know. He knew everything about her. He’d been swooning over Barbie Giorgini since the beginning of the school year.
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 8
