'74 & Sunny Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t bring himself to refer to his son as a homosexual. He, along with a lot of other professionals, preferred the term “brain damaged.”
    So when the phone rang outside my door that summer night in June 1974, I heard my uncle coming to grips with the fact that his youngest boy, Gino, was going the way of his older brother.
    I cracked my door open a slit to see the action.
    â€œAl,” said Uncle Larry. “I’m fucked. I’m fucked, I’m afraid, and I don’t know how to handle this. I’m afraid my Gino is brain damaged too. I don’t know what to do, Al. I don’t know what to do.”
    If it weren’t so sad, it would have had all the high drama of Johnny Fontane crying to Vito Corleone.
    â€œWhat the fuck are the odds? How do you know?”
    â€œAlfred. A father just . . . knows.”
    I heard Uncle Larry stop to light a cigarette, exhale the smoke, and take a swig from a glass of whiskey. The clink of the ice cubes, sounded like three of them, came across the wire crystal clear.
    My father covered the phone and motioned to my mother. “Larry thinks Gino is brain damaged like Larry Jr.”
    â€œWhat?” she gasped.
    Then, my father, using an old, Italian euphemism for gay men, pulled on his ear lobe and whispered, “ Ricchione.”
    I had heard it used before, when my father saw certain people on TV whom he perceived to be gay. “David Bowie . . . ricchione !” “Liberace . . . ricchione !” Why tugging on an earlobe and using a word derived from the Italian translation for “ear” was meant for straight men to warn others that a homosexualwas approaching, I have no idea. All I can think of is that gay men were the first to wear earrings aside from women.
    â€œOh, Jesus Christ on the cross,” my mother said, lighting a cigarette.
    â€œAl, I need you to help me here,” Uncle Larry slurred. “Maybe a summer with you and A.J. and Jack and Frankie and the fishing and the sports can snap him out of it. Is that something we can do? I’m FUCKED ! ”
    My father didn’t hesitate.
    â€œ Aspetta, aspetta (wait, wait). What’s today? Thursday. Come by this weekend, stay with us a couple nights, and then leave him here until school starts in September. We’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry about nothing.”
    â€œOh, Alfred, I love you. I feel like a goddamned fool calling on my youngest brother for help.”
    â€œLarry, stop the histrionics. Chin up. Put down the vodka. You took care of my Rosalie for her first eighteen months while I was overseas. This is the least I can do. Larry, we love you and we all love little Gino. We’re Benzas. We’ll get through this.”
    By the time they had hung up, Lorraine, Aunt Mary, and I had all made our way out of our beds and were standing in the hallway.
    â€œYour uncle Larry needs help with Gino,” my father stated. “And that’s what we’re gonna do. It’s gonna be a different summer for all of us, but this is what you do for la famiglia.”
    We returned to our bedrooms more or less shell-shocked, none of us able to sleep. I could hear my mother and father talking in their bed as they settled back in.
    â€œJesus,” my mother said. “What are the chances of having two queer sons? Poor Larry. I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, but—”
    My father cut her off at the jump.
    â€œLilly, forget that horseshit about the Lord’s mysterious ways,” he said, dripping with the sarcasm of a determined atheist. “Let me tell you something: if your boss was that mysterious , you’d quit your fuckin’ job.”

3

    SIDESHOW
    I ’ve had my dependency on various drugs over the years, but the biggest monkey I ever had to flip off my back was, undoubtedly, my sad reliance on Tums. Yes, Tums. The perfect little cylinder with the tightly wrapped foil