Since I never spoke like this, right, since the people in my life, or my friends, might not totally understand this new phase…I heard back from Gumby, my cousin in my second surrogate home. She was like my sister for some years in my youth though more like my partner in crime…my duo. We were a goddamn duo. Showtime Christmas, brilliant. I came into this house in New Jersey with a tape recorder…we did play-by-play of our family functions, meals, we danced during the meals. We put on shows. We brought Showtime Christmas to a golden age. Comedy routines. Everyone in this family was a comedian. We said it, broke it down, I mean Uncle Gus was Fred Willard’s old comedy partner. He, at that point, could approach the table with his…comedy routines. “Hey,” rubbing his hands. Kenny G, time to spruce up, do a little hop, a little foot change, you see.
The thing is, family was rather disastrous for me. I got my sister — the sister I have in my corner regardless. From the third family. She, too, came out of a situation. She didn’t go to foster care either. Alcohol in my lone burger patty…alcohol in her milkshakes. You understand? Yeah. We came from different circumstances though. She had a grandmommie from Inglewood — she saw that shit. Said no to COVID four times. Nope. 98. And the church in her case really supported her. She went to Dartmouth— peace. This is my sister. My mother now, too. We’ve gone through a lot.
It’s just to say. I wasn’t adopted. So this is a slightly different story.
Gumby’s mother became my “like a mother.”
But the thing is…in having gotten this — out of the way — it’s not the same world. Had I known or been able to talk about what was going on back at my house, if people understood the actual thing I was dealing with, this kind of “semi parent hood” or help could have worked. Not like it didn’t but it didn’t…eek…end up totally helping me. I had to un-program this. None of that was clear. I was operating from…a particular set-up. It bothers me sometimes that I basically just got it.
Very real.
His illness came out when I was twenty. Then…things…ended.
My Neapolitan relatives are just hilarious. Hilarious.
That’s why I’m feeling so confident, too, in that, the actual story that you’re going to read…now with poetic significance beginning to live and breathe…is sort of a page-turner in its own way. Both my parents were sick. Not there yet. You might get there. Might go — I’m sorry, but did no one hear you, how did you talk about this? At times, I thought, can’t quite judge the line between me and the other since it was, from what I understand, unclear. I have to just deal with it, too — disbelief.
Here, in this family, not the same thing…this was twelve years. I come to understand that I never spent Christmas with my father. AH, they are like AH. What? No? Who? Yes? No? Did I? Did you what? I never spent…he came over on Christmas Day like a distant relative and watched me get…more involved with this family. In that, I had a stocking at their house. How weird this was? Not that I didn’t love them…but just coming to…I spent Christmas with them. Got up, opened my presents, my stocking…she made sure I had the same presents. I mean, come on.
But the shopping bag lol to my Neapolitan relatives…I had a shopping bag that became a real stocking. “You see, USA? America? Inside? Al dentro?” Si, si, they got it immediately. I rubbed my fingers together. Telling them that in America — it’s about the MONEY. Consumerism, sure sure, they had heard, and who cares? Anche family, si si. “Dante,” I mean, Franco said it again. Yes, yes, they got the atmosphere. All alone with the Christmas lights, si si, si si. But I’m just sort of putting this together…just the basics. We all laughed at the shopping bag…
But think about it —
The second home ended badly.
Luckily, I got the Oldest Storyteller…as a story…meaning, it was the place where I worked it out, came to understand the basics. Separately from this one.
After I settled all that, recently, I just thought, wow. Gumby was a good friend in my youth. But again, I came out of particular circumstances and my father’s innocence even came into question. Given away at four. Miracle Mile. I’m being manipulated. And then, he gets diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which they know, when I was ten because I told her at twenty all confused. He didn’t tell anyone though it turned out to be Alzheimer’s. My parents were sick.
In terms of my operation, the choices I made, I found myself rather remarkable, you know what I mean? I settled what I needed to. Again, moved to Paris — because I had an experience around time, as in, my perception of time changed twice the year he was diagnosed around then, according to his doctor. I probably could have sued. No one saw that I was affected. But no one asked what my life was like at home. Wouldn’t have said anything.
If one is bound by these types of mistakes…this is another profound subject but the impact of this, what it meant to me…The Oldest Storyteller.
A higher perspective.
Every story ever told.
I don’t know what that idea helped me so much.
This house was sticky. Took me time. That kind of wisdom. Many many stories.
I thought, I would write a little note to Gumby. It’s been so so many years. I’m not exactly the same person even by conventional standards. I spoke to the Neapolitans about all this. Just please, Maria, I mean, even if they didn’t make connections, they were supportive of me. And she wrote back. She wrote back right away too. I appreciated that. I mean, it’s just a hello. So, she said hello back.
I can’t even say much more than that.
What a journey that was…out of childhood.
So sure, had friends, kicking around a ball, but family was…a whole subject.
Harris, it was for her too.
My point of view is not the same. I had to lift myself up. Just coming into this house — as his illness began to land, the whole thing began to land…family “two.” Family two that came into my life that wasn’t mine. They were my cousins. And thanks, because just saying that— took a second, feeling-wise, not to turn against myself…
With such a character — the oldest storyteller — we’re riding through the life of it, too. It could take on a scope…even imaginary, fantastical in a sense, visual, sensational. Now, I’m integrated, and I forgave myself. In terms of scale, in terms of the childhoods and experiences that people have gone through…it was all in that idea: the oldest storyteller. I didn’t have to battle that part. Though I did.
Like, as a parent to myself, how would I look back on this?
I always thought Gumby was a great person.
That took me real time to work out…
Fabulous, sure.
Supported by my friends, sure.
Did they get it?
Is it their job to? No. That’s the individual thing to work out. I thought a lot about Harris, I really did, through this, Mike Nichols coming to mind now. I didn’t ask them to but as you’ll see my cousins could act like they did, thinking they did, and I laugh. That’s true. I can move forward, exist a little differently.
Never talked like this. And I still have all that fun material — it’s not dark. Showtime Christmas - comedy, sure. The family function supreme. Aunt Jane should be immortalized in some fashion showing up with presents wrapped in her daughter-in-law’s old paper. Archetypes. Me and my tape recorder. What is up with the in-laws? I said into my tape recorder…there seems to be a theme here.
Do people know this? Yes, it seems like they do on some level. It’s pretty by the book.
I just figured I would share that. Since I’m writing about them in this book.
So this is family two around the Feast of Santa Lucia right now. I get out of Miracle Mile — the Brazilian mother who took me home one day for four years…I’m driving through a blizzard, a terrible blizzard, just a storm, family, wonderful. And I’m about to do it again. In a sense. He’s sick.
Again, in Naples — it’s ALL at once. Boom. I also met them for the first time.
Me telling Flora I was “the phantome…”
“When you are dead…”
Ahhhhh…Flora.
“Fantasma!” Carmine ponts.
Ghost.
“I am the phantome,” I said, with a bright demeanor.
“Fantasma,” Carmine reminded me.
“Phantome,” lol.
I disappeared to them too or I didn’t exist, weirdly. Aunt Jane came bolting — shut up JOE! — out the door — THE PHANTOM! Is that You? She couldn’t believe it, breathless, on a dark night…Christmas in New Jersey. After all this. She was beginning to wonder if I existed. “I call you the phantom.” On the phone with Chris later, “the phantom is here.” Very chipper, proper. “Yes dear?” Smiling. “Don’t call you that,” WELL? Dropping a little. “This is what she IS…”
I was the phantom.
My classmates at St. Jerome — Jason — CASPER. He cracked up. When I pulled up years later.
So I told them.
Flora thought that was so funny.
“You’re Casper? The ghost that’s friendly?”
We’re sort of bonding but over what ? Franco Franzese. But we’re getting closer in a sense. There’s something “touching” about my story? How I tell it? Entertaining. They appreciated me as a person.
I’m just trying to tell them that disappearance was sort of a theme.
A hard one.
I’m making ghost arms.
They brought it up on the Feast of Santa Lucia.
How I might tell that story might shift in that — it’s all Christmas — but Franco brought it up around then. Then, the third family was the day before Christmas. I’m walking down the steps, and by this point, the boys are taking boxes of dessert offerings for Franco off dollies, out of trunks, because he’s a urologist. Franco doesn’t even need to see me — he feels me. “What’s this droopy energy with which you are descending the stair?” I come around. He’s giving me hand signals, bringing me down from the stair with a pinch, the droop in energy here. What is this?
They just were so great.
“E! Is a store for the fruit?!”
“Natale natale natale…”
He waddles.
Dragonfruits.
“Why,” he can barely enunciate, “are you coming down the stairs…like this? Speak.”
“Let me guess,” Vico — boom.
“He’s in love with you.”
I am constrained by the language so it’s one by one. But that’s the third family. I learned that in English, this story became soup apparently, but they kept hitting it — right on the head. Boom. We went in order without me trying really…Back in the interrogation room — hot night, hot night. Of course, I came to understand — the United States could confuse any country South of us. Are these the Brazilians or the Mexicans? The most common question. Also, my story was impossible to follow. That’s what I understood. Just taking what I learned.
In this…
“The Brazilians or the Mexicans?”
They asked.
“Another mother?”
“MARIA? Are these the Brazilians?”
“The Mexicans,” I dangled them, “are not Brasilia,” over here.
“I do not change the two paesi.”
Thanks.
Night. I’m going to go back.
A nice hello back from Gumby.
Love Actually — that’s enough for now. Exactly, I mean, she’s married to his best friend…this guy. He had to settle that for himself…maybe she…had no idea…just to say, didn’t hate you. Who doesn’t love Love Actually, just please. Lots of people too. Interconnected.
-
What really happened…we had pizza after this…the eve before Christmas Eve. The boxes pop open. Either that or sausage.
This third family is a whole…
Right now, I don’t know if I’m going to adjust the timeline. I wanted to bring Gennaro and Persephone in for the end of this second family with their three baby dragons as in boys, a funny group, in that these boys are a trio with their rolling suitcases. Gennaro ran Apple Hungary and then Spain so the boys have toys, equipment, etc. It’s funny. Their sweatshirts. “Christmas chill.”
His wife’s name is not Persephone. God knows what her name is (I can do that with her). She’s Persephone, this is what I saw at nine; I saw Greek mythology in all these people. She was Gennaro’s high school sweetheart who I saw as a Hades, immediately, what can I say? That’s just what I saw. I do not call her by her given name. They can arrive a few days before Christmas at the end of this second family group first not for the third family since that’s the Eve before Christmas Eve. You might want them before.
It’s just that they came in at different times.
Persephone nodded at me getting provocative over Franco calling Ignazo “OBAMA.”
“You must defy your family.”
“If you really,” I said it at the table, “Obama INSIDE. You must.”
“DID HE NOT TRY AND CHANGE THE SYSTEM?”
Persephone simply explained with super pretty auburn frizzy hair and crystal blue eyes that clowns and politicians go together. This is true.
She got the buffoon about Dr. J.
Yes.
Right now, Ignazo cruises in hilariously on the Feast of Santa Lucia, unexpectedly, after making an unexpected appearance at breakfast with a Pandoro. It begins with “FARFALLONE!” His father calls him a goddamn butterfly. So he has to pop in. Out. Thumbs up. Wink and a smile. The politician. Drives his father CRAZY. It’s just love. I laughed so hard. Franco Franzese: he wants me to watch this guy. Watch what he does.
A touching portrait in my opinion. His busting chops — love. So, sure, sure…not taking this seriously. Come on Franco Franzese.
Ignazo, in reality, interrupts the New Jersey thread. But that doesn’t have to be there. It’s just that — Jesus, a lot happened on these feast days. The Feast of Santa Lucia is only December 14th. It’s more about figuring out the story of it, where to place everyone’s entrances. Gennaro and Persephone speak English — so that’s something else. I’m trying to activate them and make a fluid ensemble. They have bigger roles to play. Ignazo and Emilio no. Not in my story. Everyone coming at once with a stretch between the 14th and 23rd? I don’t know. It’s not like I have to “really” give you that time span. That was — still Christmas. You might want to come on the ride. They baptize me in song. It just keeps going.
And the whole thing is fun.
I’ll work on making this splicing in the beginning work — and take it from there. Just sharing.