Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  From as early as I can recall, I wanted to be the game-winning athlete who was carried off the field on my team’s shoulders after hitting an upper deck grand slam to win the championship series in the bottom of the ninth inning; to be the hero who tackled the gun-toting hijacker; to have a national holiday named after me for my contributions to the human race. I didn’t always care how I achieved greatness, but that hunger for glory was what made me tick.

  I went to great lengths to try to fulfill that dream, and some of the actions I took still fill me with dread and regret. For more than two decades I have searched my soul, wondering how I could have strayed so far off-track, committed such vile acts of hatred, and advocated for the annihilation of people based solely on the color of their skin, who they loved, or the god to whom they prayed.

  In trying to reconcile my actions, I have come to believe that at the root of my motivations lies a basic human necessity. Far stronger than my overwhelming desire to achieve prominence was the profound, essential human need to belong—a force I could not have articulated at the time, but one which propelled me to actions both good and bad, harmless and treacherous, self-fulfilling and self-destructive. This need, coupled with my tendency toward ambition, defined my actions and led me down a troubled and dark path to prejudice, racism, and violence.

  What follows is my story. Because I cannot recall conversations verbatim, I have taken some liberties in recreating scenes to capture events and portray the people in them as closely as I can remember. Memory colors things, and I fully admit that others may have perceived events differently. However, I have been careful to report as truthfully as my memory serves me, with the intention of accurately revealing what took place. I have also deliberately changed many of the names to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

  Though I wish I could rewrite a significant part of my life, I have been honest. I have not sugarcoated my past, even though the bitterness of my convictions during my troubled years was brutal and immense. My reservations about my hateful actions were also true at the time, and I haven’t changed them to fit a retrospective view. If anything, I hope the reader despises my duplicity as much as he or she abhors my deeds. It is worse to have acted as I did when I knew better, and I include my doubts to emphasize, not relieve, my guilt.

  My hope in writing this book is that others will read it and heed how disturbingly easy it is for someone without prior inclination toward prejudice or violence to enter a world laden with unadulterated hate; that others may see the desire to belong—if taken to the extreme and not addressed early enough—can have repugnant results, and that the promise of power is sometimes so seductive, an impressionable mind can be persuaded to commit atrocious acts in its pursuit.

  I write this book with optimism that others will search for identity, belonging, and acceptance in healthy, inclusive communities and will have the strength to walk away from empty promises, and that people will listen to those who encourage them to be compassionate human beings instead of finding a place among those who prey on the insecure and exploit their loneliness, fear, confusion, and feelings of worthlessness.

  I hope that by exposing racism, hate will have fewer places to hide.

  Christian Picciolini, St. Damian eighth grade yearbook photo, 1987

  1

  RIGHTS OF THE ABUSED

  Jake Reilly picked me randomly that soggy April afternoon to be the target of his malicious playground taunts, insulting me for anything he could think of. He was the quintessential class bully—“Goliath” as we had secretly referred to him since the first grade—and he took great pleasure in routinely tormenting his less fortunate eighth grade classmates at St. Damian Elementary School.

  Today, for what seemed the millionth time, he chose me.

  “Fuck you!” I fired off. I instantly wished I could take back my words as I spun around straight into the puffed-out chest of the grinning Goliath, who I realized had just rifled the handful of frozen grapes at the back of my head.

  Fuck me.

  The whispering chatterboxes in plaid smocks and pigtails and the skinned-knee jungle gym rats who were gathered around various puddle clusters on the playground wasted no time sensing the fresh blood in the water. Like hungry sharks smelling chum, they closed in around us in a flash.

  “Oh look, isn’t Pick-my-weenie tough?” Jake snickered while jabbing me hard in the chest with his chubby index finger. He loved to mangle my foreign last name and never ran out of creative ways to do so. How I longed for a normal name like Eddie Peterson or Dan Cook or Jimmy Mayfair. Anything but the impossible-to-say Christian Picciolini—pronounced “Peach-o-lee-nee”—which made for all kinds of god-awful rhyming nicknames. Pick-my-weenie. Suck-my-weenie. Lick-my-weenie. Basically, anything-weenie. “You gonna sic your greasy Blue Island dago friends on me?” he mocked, making fun of the largely Italian neighborhood just outside of Chicago where my parents had moved us from before landing in this suburban hellhole of Oak Forest, Illinois. “After school, cheese dick, I’m kicking your slimy Eye-talian ass back to the ghetto where you belong.”

  Jake didn’t flinch at calling another student an “ass face” or a “dick with ears” whenever he felt like it. And he never lied about delivering a beating. But no one had ever dared challenge him with a “fuck you” before. Even if it had escaped my mouth by regrettable accident. I was a dead man, and everyone knew it. Certainly was nice of him to suggest I had friends, though.

  “And if you don’t show up again this time, pussy,” he sneered, reeling me in close by my hood strings, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Throughout eight years of elementary school I’d managed to invent enough excuses to avoid getting physically rearranged by Jake. But before I could muster a lie good enough for me to skip out on this particular jam, word spread faster than Nutella on warm toast. And by the time the final recess bell rang, everybody knew about the fight. Except for the adults, of course. They were never there when you needed them.

  I prayed one of the teachers—or the principal herself—would catch wind of the fight and put an end to it, but my prayers went unanswered. Doom loomed over me. Jake Reilly was much bigger—thick and tall and strong—and he’d surely have his cronies behind him. I’d be in it alone. I didn’t have any friends in Oak Forest, or even Blue Island for that matter, to back me up. Other than the few moves I picked up when I watched Rocky beat up Mr. T in the movies, or how Rowdy Roddy Piper smashed Hulk Hogan over the head with a steel chair on TV wrestling, I had no clue how to fight or defend myself. But I couldn’t back down now. Not this time. Not with four years of Goliath-dominated high school and an endless supply of ridicule on the horizon. Running away and being forever branded a “pussy” would be infinitely worse than getting pummeled.

  Hoping that more time meant I might be able to come up with a believable last-minute excuse to not show up and get my ass kicked, I took the longer route home after the final class bell rang. No such luck. All I could think about was how to convince my parents to let me transfer schools by tomorrow so I wouldn’t have to deal with the mockery that was sure to be heaped on me by my classmates the next morning. But my parents weren’t home.

  I changed out of my light blue school uniform and navy slacks, grabbed my Santa Cruz skateboard, and apprehensively rode the six blocks to the park where the fight was to happen. I knew the entire eighth grade class would be there to witness my slaughter. People had even placed bets, and proclaimed the loser—who everybody fully expected to be me—would have to pay the winner ten bucks.

  The moment this fight was over, I’d be ruined forever. Beaten. Stigmatized and forgotten. Cast atop the growing heap of junior high nobodies who’d already been humiliated by Goliath. I couldn’t care less about where I’d get the money to pay off the stupid bet, knowing I could easily swipe that from my grandmother’s purse without her knowledge. But I also knew that once I was dispatched into nothingness, there was no coming back. No one ever recovered fro
m that.

  As I rode up, I spied the giant lumbering confidently among the large group that had gathered like buzzards anticipating a fresh roadkill buffet. Attempting to steady my shaking knees, trying to keep my fear under wraps, I stepped off my board and struggled to take in my final gulps of air. Wiping away the nervous sweat that was already trickling down my brow, I thought one last time about running away. Maybe being exiled from the ranks of St. Damian’s lower order wouldn’t be worse than getting my face pounded by this massive beast.

  As I retreated backwards, planting my foot back onto my skateboard deck and turning to push off with my unsteady leg, some of the more spiteful onlookers suddenly broke into a clamor: “Pick-my-weenie! Pick-my-weenie! Pick-my-weenie!” Sensing my dread, the whole crowd turned against me.

  I felt myself becoming dizzy and detaching from reality—fading into the ether—as I inhaled another series of quick, shallow breaths to try to calm my nerves. I turned toward my tormentor to accept my fate, just as a colossal wad of spit flew through the air and landed with a wet gooey thwack dead on my cheek.

  Hushed silence. Except for Jake, whose loud, guttural snort only meant that another loogie was imminent.

  Anxious panic flushed through me, and before I could wipe his spit from my face, another glob of thick yellow phlegm struck me in the chest like a sniper’s bullet and slowly dribbled down my turquoise Ocean Pacific T-shirt.

  “What’s wrong, dick breath,” Reilly jeered, pudgy arms crossed over his chest, “are ya chicken? Bawk, bawk.” The crowd formed a wall around us. “Suck-my-weenie ain’t got no balls,” he proclaimed. A shock of laughter broke out from the enclosing group of spectators.

  Jesus Christ. This kid was big. Goliath was growing twice as big as he stood before me, while I shrunk smaller and smaller. This is suicide, I thought. He took a step towards me and spat a third time at the ground near my feet as if to mark the spot of my execution.

  As the grip of the taunting mob tightened around us, we circled each other, the requisite trash talk spewing from the ogre’s crooked smile. Jake was name-calling. I was stalling. My swollen, purple eye from last week—the one I’d gotten when three black kids from Blue Island jumped me and stole my bike—was finally beginning to heal, and I didn’t want to have to explain a fresh one to my parents. Terror overtook me and I could barely hear the crowd’s increasingly muffled chants over my own fearful thoughts and the dull, echoing crackle of crisp leaves under my feet. “Quit being a faggot, like your pussy hairdresser dad, and stand still so I can friggin’ kill you!” Jake made a beeline towards me.

  The tendons in my arms tightened. Pulsed. My mind spun with fear, becoming further detached from my surroundings. My heart thumped out of my chest. Out of sheer despair, I summoned the nerve to step in with him and throw the first punch. Kill or be killed. What more could I lose? At least I’d go to my death valiantly. My baby brother, Buddy, would be proud that I wasn’t a complete coward. I shut my eyes and tensed my sweaty right hand, pulled it back and swung wildly, landing squarely.

  Jake went down.

  Holy shit.

  My first instinct was to bolt, but my legs weren’t cooperating.

  From the sudden jumble of gasps and groans behind me, I made out the frenzied voice of Jake’s goon Kyle McKinney yelling, “Hit him! Hit him!” But Jake stayed put on the ground, confused, whimpering, covering his bleeding nose.

  “Hit him again!” his pal shouted. Shocked, I realized he actually wanted me to beat up his best friend. Could it be? Was everyone as sick of Goliath’s bullying as I was? Or was it that the rush of fighting was so intoxicating even his most loyal subjects savored the blood and violence over their friendship?

  I shook the thought out of my head and fell hard on that bastard Jake Reilly with eight solid years of Catholic school retribution on my mind. Adrenaline pumping, I pinned him down with my knees, pulled back my fists, and slammed them into his face again. And again. And again.

  Sobbing, he cried, “Stop! Stop! I quit! Just stop! You win.” Streams of tears turned into crimson rivers flowing down his bruised cheeks.

  I rose to my feet and wiped my bloodied, swollen knuckles across my T-shirt. “You owe me ten bucks” was all I could mutter through a mouth that was absent of any saliva. I turned to leave, though my wobbly legs were barely able to carry me, and I thought I might pass out right there in front of the whole stunned eighth grade class. Just then, my oxygen-deprived lungs remembered to breathe. I inhaled deeply as the faint sounds of hooting and hollering slowly became audible and then filled my ears.

  The giant lay defeated before me.

  The next morning, my classmates swarmed around me the moment I got to school. My once non-existent stature had grown to epic proportions overnight: I’d become a Bully Slayer. Even the cool kids who’d ignored me for the last eight years looked up to me because I’d taken down one of their own. Not to mention I was ten bucks richer.

  I was drunk with my newfound significance. Suddenly, I wasn’t the weird Italian kid who spent all his afterschool free time with his elderly grandparents in their Blue Island “ghetto” instead of the stale upper-middle-class confines of this Oak Forest suburbia. For a brief moment, I wasn’t the little boy with the peculiar mom and dad who couldn’t speak proper English. Who owned a beauty shop and brought their kid sloppy lunches in oil-stained paper sacks.

  No, I was the tough kid. The most dangerous kid in school, in fact. In all of Oak Forest even. And if Oak Forest had been any closer than the twenty miles away it was from downtown Chicago, then perhaps the mayor would have even thrown a parade down State Street in my honor.

  During my first period math class, I flexed my fists, silently studying them, trying to take in the reality that these two balled-up, bruised hands were my ticket to respect and power. My baby brother wouldn’t be the only kid who looked up to me anymore.

  I took this lesson to heart, absorbing it in every fiber of every muscle and organ in my body. It would end up serving me well in the years to come when I’d help build one of America’s most violent homegrown terror organizations.

  Christian, Blue Island, 1978 (Photo by Maddalena Spinelli)

  2

  COLD

  Perhaps who we truly become begins with our parents’ emotional state at conception, multiplied at least tenfold by our pregnant mothers’ dreams for us. It may well begin with DNA combining randomly, taking some from Dad here and Mom there, but that’s only the bones—the hair and eye color, nose shape, height, and other physical characteristics by which the outside world recognizes us.

  Maybe the real person, the inner being, is determined not by the arbitrary mixing of genes, but by some mystery science has yet to unravel—a metaphysical occurrence of two souls inviting another soul to come to life.

  In my case, the two souls were Enzo Picciolini and Anna Spinelli.

  My father, the youngest of six children, had been fatherless since his early childhood growing up in a tiny southwestern valley town near Salerno, Italy, called Montesano Scalo.

  After my father’s dad passed, my grandmother moved the family from Italy to Chicago to be near a sister who had already emigrated to the United States. So, in 1962, when my father was sixteen, he boarded an overcrowded passenger ship and a month later settled down with his family on the South Side of Chicago, near Midway Airport.

  Enzo later enrolled in beauty school and learned enough English from his older brothers to pass his licensing exams. When he was twenty-five, he met my mother who, like himself, was also an Italian immigrant and a hairdresser.

  Within six months, they were married. I know little of their courtship. I’ve seen wedding photographs and old films, but I can’t say whether they were in love or just at the age when they both knew the time for marriage had come. I imagine they were both relieved to wed someone with a similar background—someone who understood the trials of being an outsider, of struggling with a language to which they had not been born
, adjusting to odd and unfamiliar customs, all the while trying to build a new life on foreign soil.

  And so, in Chicago on a cold and frosty St. Valentine’s Day in 1973, I was conceived by two young Italian immigrants torn between two lands. Awkward and ill at ease in one country, and far away from the other, they were determined that their offspring would know none of their struggles. Anna and Enzo’s child would not suffer language barriers, would get a fine American education, and would have options beyond blue-collar jobs in the great land of opportunity in which they had planted their roots.

  To prepare for my birth, my parents made a drastic and culturally uncharacteristic decision. They stretched themselves well beyond their financial means and bought a house in suburban Oak Forest, ten miles away from Blue Island, the working-class Italian neighborhood on the southwest edge of Chicago where my mother’s family lived.

  Nonna Nancy, my mother’s mother—the matriarch of our family—and Nonno Michele, my grandfather, had left Ripacandida, their close-knit and quaint farming community near the ankle of the Italian boot seven years earlier, in the mid-1960s, to join the ranks of other Europeans who believed the United States was the “Promised Land.” After trying to emigrate for many years—the process complicated because my grandfather had also lived and worked in South America upon completing service as a master corporal in Mussolini’s Italian Air Force during World War II—they finally settled into Blue Island, an urban enclave populated with people much like them—hardworking Ripacandidese families who believed in family, old-world traditions, and daily consumption of olive oil and pasta.

  My grandparents advised my mother against her decision to move out of the neighborhood. Nonna and Nonno lived in adequate comfort in a friendly community made up of old three-story apartment houses made of cinder blocks and bricks, small gardens overgrowing with bell peppers, herbs, and tomatoes, and basement cantinas crammed with aging Mason jars of homemade tomato ragù, cured sausage, and bottles of vino. They may have moved to a country full of people with strange customs, rude behavior, and no respect for the old ways, but they had the good sense to live amongst those who adhered to the right way of life—the Italian way.