Riding the Contrary

Contrarian

My future began sometime in the Summer of 1976, my sixteenth year, standing against the back of my father's 1977 Chrysler Cordoba in the driveway of our Clarence, New York home. It was a habit I slowly developed, perching myself there, staring, thinking, contemplating.

I always enjoyed those moments of solitude in my childhood, especially this one, no one around, just me on an early Sunday morning doing what I love to do...marinating my thoughts, even in abject depression.

I stared ahead, looking across Hillview Drive, at Mr. and Mrs. Jones's gorgeous manicured front lawn and then beyond to their upscale yet modest home and the towering forest of trees sitting atop the ridge behind it; deep and various shades of green ensconced my entire view...peaceful, serene, wrapped in a warm humid breeze and serenaded by awakening robins and larks. This all played within my irony.

I was Sixteen and lost.

My first truly romantic experience with a girl, a year younger yet years older in maturity and deceptive cunning, destroyed my soul.

I stood there, shattered, tranquilized by the beauty that surrounded me, trying desperately to pick up the remnants of a child's heart, and rebuild it with the same audacity that nearly destroyed it...vowing inwardly only subconsciously, I would live a life of spite. I didn't know that then. I didn't know it for many years of spite afterwards.

Yet, that was my vow.

I'm a creative fighter. I enjoyed the scene of Robert Deniro playing Lamatta, asking his brother to smack him in the face with his fist, over and over again.

I get it.

I enjoyed the scene of Matt Damon, playing Will Hunting, telling his therapist, played by Robin Williams, the story of how his father would ask him to choose his form of punishment, a belt or a wrench...and he said " the wrench". "Why?", asked Robin Williams, "because fuck him!, that's why".

I get it.

Rather...I have always been "rather".

I enjoyed reading about how John Lennon went to one of Yoko's avant garde art performances for one of the first times and every participant was asked to get into a bag; an act of spite against society...and he refused saying later, "I wanted to be the one who didn't get in a bag...you know...the 'spoil sport'!"

I get spite, especially in the face of spite.

I always dropped the ball playing football in fourth grade. I was the last picked when picking teams. Then, when everyone wrote me off, I performed well in the sport earning a starting position on the high school varsity team, even a scholarship try out...then left it and defied the coach at every turn. I sought everyone's attention in devious ways when forced into a new school in sixth grade, then shunned them all...then tried out for the part of the "cowardly lion" in the school play and got it, then never got on stage again. In fact, even before that, I was terrified of the stage since I was four years old at my mother's dance recital. The fat lady in the front row laughed at me because my shoelace was untied. I remember my mom standing behind the curtain in front of us but unseen by the audience, and the lady laughing, and running to my mother and hugging her tightly...and I remember as if it were yesterday rather than fifty-three years ago.

Yet, I still command attention and love the stage now. On spite.

I hate being controlled by dollars and I hate even more becoming in control of them...as if obliged to be on the offense..."eat or get eaten!"

Fuck you! I choose to not get in the bag!

I have been told the sign Aries was written for me as I exude the definition of it in obsessed insanity, stubborn and strong-willed. Those who would say that would also say I have never grown up, yet, on spite I chastise so many for being immature and irresponsible.

I chastise so many for being ironic while I swim in my own irony. My story may speak for so many, yet it is as original as every one our epic travels. To get to a certain age makes anyone a success...even the most indignant homeless n'er-do-well one may find on a street. Each story can captivate if one let's it be told.

It has been said of me, "put Sonny in a room full of people and you will find him talking with the oldest person in the room...".

That is because we each have amazing stories, all of us...and the older we are, the more fascinating the ride.

This is my crazy, contrarian ride and where it began...

Chapter One

Fresh Linen

July, 1965

Fine white linen sheets, billowing on a breezy July morning, have a scent that can never be forgotten.

Tinged with the slightest whiff of grass and an even slighter smell of fresh mint, these are the unforgettable senses in the back yard of Frank and Virginia Cordaro, known to our family as "Uncle Butch and Aunt Gin". At once I remember the intense feeling of being abandoned yet welcomed among strangers; people who loved me deeply. My mother had just dropped me off to begin a summer vacation with my great aunts and uncles. I missed my mother immediately and remember wanting to chase her as I watched the long rectangular tail lights of her Ford Thunderbird become smaller and smaller, disappearing down Holmes Road. And then suddenly, that fresh scent of clean linen filled my nostrils and welcomed me in. I turned from the driveway and hugged my great-grandmother and suddenly, as it always had been, and as it always would be, I was where I belonged. She smelled of liniment, bleach and olive oil. The scents blended together perfectly, like a symphony of comfort as my face pressed against her bosom and her thick harsh dress.

“Fee-la-bell” she said in Italian as she suddenly lifted my face with her chubby hand, squeezing my cheeks until it hurt.

I followed her and sat on the plush lawn in the back yard, playing with my toy truck, "driving" it in between the flat cobblestones on the foot path as my great grandmother Celia, dressed all in widow's black, raised her stocky arms from her small stocky stature, hanging the last of her wash on the circular clothes line. They had a modern clothes dryer in that small house but, just like the large portable dishwasher that served as a cutting board, it sat unused in a house with three old world women serving two old world men. The sense of tradition was firmly ensconced into my five-year-old mind and nailed shut by the sweet smells of that back yard that still linger within, forty-seven years later. In fact, it is those smells that allow me to recall so much of that period of my life. I vividly remember being an avid observer, as if I was to record all I saw and strangely, I remember feeling as an adult, reasoning it all out, as if an old soul inhabited my body. It all made sense, all of it, even as it seemed so strangely far removed from my actual home in Williamsville, New York, some sixty miles west. I found out much later that I did indeed spend much of my time as an infant and a toddler in this small, cottage sized house. As a five year old, my memories were maturing and beginning to file under the topic "long term" within my mind. It always seemed that this was an awakening, this first recollection of being far from home, abandoned, yet nurtured, having everything a child could ask for and more, sitting in the grass, rolling a Tonka dump truck and smelling the fresh linen in the breeze.

Laura and Joey, Virginia and Butch, and Celia

Never, in all the summers I spent on Holmes Road, did I find it odd that two older sisters lived together with their middle-aged husbands and their elderly mother in a two bedroom, one bath house. Never did I ever question the idea that my Aunt Gin and I would stay up, well past midnight, playing gin rummy on the kitchen table, watching the late show on the small TV set mounted on a credenza filled with knick-knacks and statues of saints, while her husband, Uncle Butch, was just put to bed on one of two sofas in the narrow living room, having come home from work and "the club" around midnight.

Never in all that time did it seem odd that Aunt Gin would finally, at 2:00 AM, put me to bed along side my snoring great grandmother, who went to bed at ten o'clock, and then wait for two more hours until grandma awoke, switching places with her at four in the morning so that grandma could get breakfast ready for Aunt Gin's sister Laura who would be arriving home from the "night trick" at Eastman Kodak. I would go to bed with Grandma Fusco, always terrified that when she stopped snoring she was dead, so I would kick her to make sure she was still alive; then I would awake at about eleven in the morning with my Aunt Gin covered head to toe in blankets, her head buried under two pillows shutting out the world, with two tents poking skyward as she somehow felt it comfortable to sleep with one bony knee and one bony elbow bent upward under the covers as she carried on with her own unique snoring caused by too many Raleigh unfiltered cigarettes combined with Carling Black label beer just before bedtime. It didn't take long for that five-year-old to grow accustomed to that late morning awakening, opening the creaky bedroom door to the smell of fresh cooked bacon, strong coffee, toast and scrambled eggs cooked in virgin olive oil all awaiting the child prince as he entered the kitchen. The breakfast feast was cooked with unconditional love by Grandma Fusco eagerly awaiting my presence.

"Eat grandma eat" she would say in broken English, stubbornly refusing to assimilate after seventy years in this country. She called me “grandma” and it made sense to me always, as much sense as the owner of the house, Uncle Butch being relegated to sleeping on the couch as his wife Gin slept in her mother's bed while his brother-in-law Joey got the other bedroom with his wife, Aunt Laura, Gin's sister. It always made sense to me and to this day it still does.

Grandma Fusco, two of her three daughters, Laura and Gin, and husbands Joey and Butch living tightly together.

The women in this cottage were my father's mother's family. My grandmother Margaret broke free of the Fusco family, as did her younger brother, my Uncle Pat, while Laura and Gin stayed with mom. Gin and her husband Frank, Uncle "Butch", welcomed Laura, Joey and mother Celia into their home years before when my father was still a little boy, and now it was my turn to experience this realm.

They were all childless. I never saw any intimacy or affection shared yet it was always there. It was always implied and it was thick in the air. After all, they loved me, my sister Tina, and my brother Tony. Being the first born in an Italian patriarchal family, I got the lion's share at times, but it was never ever at the detriment to my sister and brother.

My mother would always say after I spent an entire summer being treated like the other males in that house, like a lord, that she hated how spoiled rotten I would be for months afterwards, and I will admit the transition was stressful for me. Suddenly coming home I was forced into servitude and the rigors of a new school year. I was expected to get good grades and to do my chores; take out the garbage, shovel the drive way, clean my room, all this after a whole summer of being fed and clothed and truly getting anything I wished for by two couples and a doting great grandmother that were already trained on these disciplines with my father and his brother, when they grew up. By the time I came along, they had the whole routine working like a true machine.

I myself mastered the fine art of being a spoiled rotten brat so well that by the summer of 1969, a solid year after my glorious trip with my Aunt Laura and Grandma Fusco to New York City, it was my sister's turn to go, and, as the two of us shared our vacation together on Homes Road, I sulked solidly for five days after discovering I was not going this time, enough to finally convince Aunt Laura to convince Uncle Joe to buy another plane ticket and additional party to the hotel room. I was rotten to the core, but being a prince, I was obligated to play my part.

Aunt Laura loved Uncle Joey, deeply. She would and did do anything for him. Uncle Joe was a playboy at heart, a fund loving, easy going jokester who had me on the floor whenever Grandma Fusco got angry, which wasn't very often, calling her "Rocky Gratz". I didn't even know who that was, it just broke me up when he would grin that fiendish grin and say under his breath "Rocky Gratz" and i would literally pee my pants in hysterical laughter as she chased both of us out of the kitchen and through the narrow front hallway to the musty tobacco infested living room,

The furnishing's in that house never ever changed. Every room was narrow and confined and the heavy large furnishings made it seem even smaller than it already was. As you walked in the front door which was centered right in the middle of the house, you entered a narrow hallway with a closet directly in front of you and a massive picture mirror to the left. The mirror made no sense as I remember it now, because the hallway was so narrow, one could never see their entire image because one could never get back far enough to make it out. The hallway and living room floor were covered by a very worn sandpaper like floral carpet seemingly from the 1920’s and except for the incredible mouth watering smells of the kitchen filled with basil paprika, olive oil and various spices, the rest of the house reeked like mothballs and a stale ashtray, but somehow it was an inviting aroma all mixed together. All of these paradoxes, the relationships and the senses were a collective euphoric adventure, reality for a young mind becoming hard-wired.

Greeting you at the door for most of those years would be Sammy and Kelly. Sammy was a pure white small shepherd mix. Sammy was an abandoned puppy my father's brother, Uncle Billy found on a construction site years before. Sammy, usually a docile, easy going dog, my best friend, was always instigated by Kelly, a pure bread pug dog bred from Sandy the pug dog, hated and despised and yet owned by my grandmother Margaret; a spiteful present from her husband, my grandfather Tony. Whenever the doorbell rang, Kelly would go into a fit and begin jumping all over my short stocky great grandmother as she struggled to get to the door to answer it. This of course caused Sammy to do the same thing, so another source of amusement for me was whenever someone would come over to visit as I watched the dogs beat up my Grandma Fusco, "Rocky Gratz".

Once entering the home and turning to the left in the confined hallway, you entered the doorway of the kitchen. This had to be done slowly and with eyes wide open because directly in front of the door was my grandmother's sowing machine table and on top of it was a literal mountain of knick-knacks and curios, ranging from an antique snow globe of Niagara Falls to various saint statues including the Virgin Mary and Saint Jude, several crucifixes, a portable black and white Sony, five inch TV that was never used, a 1964 model Ford Thunderbird transistor A.M. radio all strewn with various medals, coins and sundry rosary, a marble plated scale three or four pairs of ceramic salt and pepper shakers, medications for Uncle Joe, Uncle Butch, Aunt Laura and grandma Fusco, various china and glass votives with blessed waxed candles, a coin bank "slot machine" featuring "fabulous Las Vegas", Mickey Mouse, a stuffed alligator all balancing in perfect harmony on top of a square one foot by one foot oak cabinet housing a 1949 genuine Singer Sewing machine. The amazing thing was that at least three times a week a ritual would be performed that required every single item being removed from the top of this one foot by one foot cabinet on four legs so that my grandmother could do her exquisite alterations and sewing. Then, as if a photo was taken, every single one of the dozens of curios was put back in their precise place, every single time. Walking too fast would cause an epic avalanche of souvenirs, saints and pills, so one had to veer right as they entered the narrow kitchen. Going too far right however would cause a painful hip pointer by the large oak credenza on which sat the Kitchen T.V, along with more saints and more souvenirs and a Jesus or two. One had to carefully negotiate between the credenza and the large rectangular kitchen table that sat against the wall with two chairs at the end for the lords, Butch and Joey and two chairs in the middle for their wives. There was no chair for Grandma Fusco because she was the cook and the primary server; she ate after the lords and their wives, much later, once the lords retired to their respective sofas in the smoke filled parlor down the short narrow hall.

After breakfast, my day was spent watching the kitchen TV and every game show imaginable while drawing and coloring in the heir apparent location, my Uncle Joe's chair by the front kitchen window. Every hour on the hour the cuckoo would make his presence known directly above and behind me. That clock was always precise and for years I thought it was a living little bird. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, my Aunt Gin would emerge from Grandma Fusco's bedroom, head directly for the bathroom, which afterwards smelled of Raleigh non-filtered cigarettes for an hour, and she would begin to get ready for her job as a clerk at W.T. Grant's. She didn't drive, she, as well as her sister, my grandmother, never had the desire to drive a car. I truly think it was their way to get back some of the servitude they doled out to their husbands (though I never remember Butch driving Gin anywhere). Instead, Laura would also emerge from her slumbers to drive Gin to work, come home and get ready herself for work.

"The boys" as they were called, would never ever be home until dark. After their respective jobs, Joe as a school bus driver and Butch as, what else, a butcher, they would head to "the club", which of course would be a semi notorious Italian social club with dubious activities taking place. Once Aunt Gin arrived home in the evening, usually dropped off by a co-worker, she would take over the servant’s duties from my weary grandma Fusco, follow her off to bed, get dinner started for Joey and as Joey came home ate dinner and relaxed on his sofa, she would than get the sofa on the opposite side made into a bed for Butch before he arrived (and God forbid not after). She would allow me to lie on the freshly made up sofa/bed and watch T.V, with Uncle Joey until he got tired and went into his bedroom to await Laura and her arrival home from work.

In the meantime I would lie still, carefully watching Bonanza, making sure not to make a wrinkle in Uncle Butch’s bed, smelling the sheets as I lay, the day ending as it began; fresh linen.