While Gavin is hooking up with one girl around the corner of our huge L-shaped tent, and then hooking up with another, the rest of us tear up some low-grade weed and pack a small metal pipe that Erik made for us on a lathe machine in his shop class. We pass it around something like seventeen times before anyone starts to feel the effects. The whole thing is so slow that we even pause to call Erik on his cell phone and ask why it’s taking so long to feel anything. He assures us that it’s real weed, but that since it’s our first time it will take a while to feel high, and to just keep smoking it. After about thirty minutes, we all sort of look at one another and smile broadly at the exact same time. Kieran bellows, “This shit is like Viagra!” and we all burst out laughing. What a goofy thing to say.
While we’re smoking, one of the girls comes around the corner of the tent and then climbs onto me, but I’m laughing so hard with Jake and Kieran that nothing sexual happens between her and me. Instead I spend the night laughing and doing ridiculous stuff with the guys, things like tearing the clothes off Kieran, throwing him outside the tent, and then zipping it shut. It’s one of the most fun nights of my life.
By the time we return to school the following week, a rumor has spread that us “bad boys” are severely out of control and have gotten into drugs. After this, everything seems to change overnight. I love the image of myself as a party boy and run with it. It seems, however, to elicit some serious hostility from teachers and girlfriends. Many of them act as if I’ve crossed a line by smoking weed. I don’t agree with this judgment, and something about it gives me a weird, palpable feeling of impending doom, like a storm is rapidly approaching, like I’m in the thick of the calm before it will hit, but this doesn’t affect my behavior. Over the next ten years my instincts now will prove to be correct; this is the time my life starts to spin out of control and then heads straight downward, like a dive-bomb, into the desolate, derelict pits of hell itself.
But right now I don’t know what’s to come. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that any condemnation of drug use is utterly baseless, and that drugs are meant to be enjoyed by the user at his or her discretion. Just say no? Try just say yes. Besides, the DARE officer told us point blank that weed won’t kill you.
So now I’m off and running. Usually when I go out to party, I get a cup for free because I’m with my sister, and I fill it once or maybe twice from the keg to look older. All the girls ask how old I am, and I tell them, “Old enough,” or “Find out.” From there, I usually just try and get laid, you know? I never really get drunk because I’ll have to drive my sister home. But after my experience smoking weed at the farm, something is different. All I really want to do is get high. I don’t care about looking cool or saying the right things to get with girls, like I used to. That takes effort and time and there’s no guarantee that it will go well.
My parents know that I party, and although they’ve always been strict with us, my father encourages it to a degree. I think they like the idea of having a popular kid and are okay with whatever I need to do to make that happen. On a few occasions they ask me what I did last night at “a friend’s house” and I tell them I just made out with some girls. They don’t press for more info. Whenever Allison and I head from one place to another, we’re supposed to call my parents so they know what we’re up to, but she’s not always in the best state to talk to them. Sometimes she even accidentally drunk dials our house. Without them ever implicitly saying it, I just know they know, you know? They do, however, make one thing perfectly clear: if I get a girl pregnant, my life is over, and they mean this in the fullest extent of the word over. In bed I think, I better pull out or start using condoms because my life is on the line. I could die. But while it seems like a good idea, in the moment, my body always prefers to go in a different direction. Something in me puts the threat of death on the back burner in favor of instant physical satisfaction and release. This theme will stick with me into adulthood.
Chapter 2
Living with my family always feels so off, like something is missing. Looking back, I will know it had a lot to do with the fact that I knew my home wasn’t normal. I mean, I was normal, or at least I thought so, but my home wasn’t and I was powerless to change that, which is enough to drive a person crazy. Every home is dysfunctional if you look at it closely enough, but damn, mine was like a movie and I had to play my part to perfection. There wasn’t love so much as manipulation. To suck up and feign affection went beyond what I was willing to express; I would never bow in that way. But as kids, we had to put on a show for our parents that said, “We like you, we’re friends,” while enduring their impossibly high standards of perfection and absorbing the punishments that inevitably came.
To hold onto my sanity and cope with the stress, I adopt several strategies. First and foremost, I make sure to check in with my siblings as often as I can, to connect with them at a heart level; we all yearn for deep personal relationships. I stick close to Allison and especially Austin, who sleeps on my bedroom floor when I’m home. Sometimes we lie awake for hours. I’ll say, “Ask me questions,” and he will.
“Why do some people in my class never talk? They just never say anything all day.”
“They’re just shy, little buddy.”
Aside from them, I have music and video games. I can sit alone and listen to entire Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin albums, or shoot bad guys in the face all day on PlayStation 1 or Nintendo 64. I also teach myself to play my favorite songs on the drums. I played Jay’s kit so often over the summers that his mom eventually just gave it to me. It’s a Yamaha Stage Custom with total beginner cymbals. I practice in the farthest corner of the basement, wearing headphones and listening to the songs I’m learning on CDs turned up to full volume.
At home, I become a moody, tough, and silent type of guy. My shaky relationship with my parents is a ticking time bomb, always on the brink of exploding. Eventually they will find out what I really think of them, one way or the other, and it will have to be by my actions because I sure as shit can’t tell them anything they don’t want to hear.
One day in the early 2000s, I’m going about my business, chatting with friends on AOL’s instant messaging service, AIM, when some mysterious fucker messages me and begins attacking me. He says he knows all about me and tells me his name, but I’ve never heard of him so I message other people, asking around about him. I learn that he is my age, in my grade, and plays football with me, but isn’t on my team. He’s on the losing squad and it’s pretty clear to me that he’s bitter about this and jealous of me. I wonder how it’s possible I’ve never heard of him, until he says he just moved to Green Bay and joined the team late. These aren’t problems, but what is a problem is when he says he hooked up with one of the girls in my grade who I am enthralled with and trying my best to cajole, but to no avail. He even calls her his girlfriend. My blood boils at this, and when I message the girl to ask, she confirms it. She says he just walked up to her and started calling her his girlfriend, and that’s how it all happened. I wonder if he’s dating her just to piss me off. She isn’t even that hot, so why else?
I message the scummy piece of trash that he’s about to meet his maker, and that I persuaded and arranged with this girl a winner take all Wild West duel of a fistfight for her. It turns out that the guy recently moved from Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to a house just kitty-corner from my street, next to my suburb’s park, and we arrange to meet there the following day after school. Giovanni Russo and I will fight to the death if necessary, like animals in mating season. That’s my girl, and this is my neighborhood. Or are they now his? No weapons, no other people—just me, him, and our fists will decide.
The next day, I hop off the bus with my teenage boy strut and a familiar fluttering feeling in my stomach as I blare a Slim Shady CD through my Discman. I approach the park on foot and sure enough, there he is, Giovanni Russo. I’m wearing a classic pair of three-stripe Adidas sneakers, carpenter
jeans, and a tight white Quiksilver T-shirt. He’s dressed like a skater with thick-soled flat shoes, ragged cargo pants, and a flannel shirt, and it appears as though he doesn’t want to fight. Slowly shifting his weight and walking back and forth, he glances up and to the side in a perfunctory manner, as though contemplating a higher train of thought than my own. It seems to me like he knows something I don’t, which gives me a sense of unease and a need to clarify what is about to take place. Giovanni calmly makes an attempt to reason with me. He takes a step toward me and in a calm voice says, “You know, it’s actually in your best interest not to fight me.” I reply in many cruel and inflammatory words that it’s in my interest to do whatever I have to do to get the girl I like. He seems calm and unafraid and tries to reason with me. By now he’s increasingly throwing me off and it’s alarming. I take a fighting stance, my fists raised and chin tucked, and start walking toward him, my eyes locked and glaring.
I don’t make it half of the twenty feet separating us before I hear, “Vonn-ny!” called out from a distance about two hundred yards ahead of me. I glance and see a woman beckoning with her hand while calling in a friendly and beautifully mesmerizing voice. A man with dark shoulder-length curly hair stands next to her. He’s lurched forward with his hands on a house’s deck railing. They are just beyond the small creek adjacent to the road that hems the park. I stop and tell Giovanni what a coward he is for having his parents interrupt us. He turns to acknowledge them, and I, for some reason that will forever remain unknown to me, am unable to bring myself to rush him and deliver the beatdown necessary in order to ensure the romance with my prize.
Giovanni waves off his parents, and then turns back to me. “Okay, look, how about this . . . I’ll back off Cassie if you just come over to my house.”
The statement is so odd, but his tone is so confident, even friendly. I drop my hands, letting my guard down. Time stands still and we just look at each other: he waiting for me to respond, me confused and not knowing what to say.
In the awkwardness of the moment, a lonely, awful feeling encircles me and wraps around me, growing tighter by the second. Where does my aggression come from? For the briefest of moments, a flood of horrifying suppressed memories flashes through my mind. I’m not sure what he’s doing and it’s messing with me. Is this a trick, or is this what kindness is? Am I so broken by what I’ve endured that I can’t even recognize kindness? Giovanni turns to face me. He motions for me to walk with him to his home. I’m not sure what to do, but I sure don’t want to go back to my house, especially not with the fire that’s building inside me. He then says the kindest word that’s ever been spoken to me, “Please.”
We walk together through a garden, following a pebble-strewn path that blends into the tree line and then curves behind a stream and pond before continuing on. His house is a sprawling two-story red brick building with black trim: nice, normal looking. Another garden, which occupies the entire front yard, is hidden from the street by woods and underbrush. The path feels wondrous and beautiful and continues until we arrive at a wooden archway covered in vines. Past it is a line of flat limestone stepping-stones leading up to concrete stairs that lead you to the front door or the driveway if you veer right. It’s clear the place was thoughtfully designed.
Giovanni and I enter through the main door and make our way into the living room, where he sets down his backpack and I follow suit. He then walks across the white oak floors, going past the fireplace to the left and toward the back of the home. He tells me, “Just wait here.”
I watch him silently disappear around the corner in the silent home and assume he’s going to see his parents who are still out back. While he’s gone I wait uncomfortably, standing alone and noting the strange, foreign artifacts on the shelves that line each wall from floor to ceiling. There are small statues and tall djembe drums, and a wealth of other oddities. I guess the furniture is modern, but I’m not sure if that’s the right description. It’s downright weird looking, straight out of the film Beetlejuice. A curved chair with only one armrest is covered in a black-and-white tiger fur pattern. It looks like a throne for Cruella de Vil.
After standing awkwardly for a full minute, and with the coast clear, I slowly make my way around the living room, continuing to note the strange furniture, strewn about seemingly randomly. Gothic artwork lines the walls, with images of death such as a skull being cradled by a beautiful woman, and other pieces suggesting the contrast between good and evil. I am drawn to one particular item, a long handmade wooden pipe that has bright Mediterranean-colored feathers tied to and hanging off of it. I pick it up and examine it closely. I can tell that it’s functional.
I sit in the only normal looking chair in the room. It’s in the corner and is a soft, deep red, cushioned leather chair with a very high back. A half-second later, a sharp, heavily accented voice says, “That is mine.” Startled, I looked up and see a dark figure peering around the corner at me, quietly drawing closer as I hurriedly stand up and back away from the item. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says, “Welcome to my home.” No hand is extended with this greeting, but the man, who is surely Giovanni’s father, continues, “We are enjoying the spring sun, step onto my veranda.” The man has the thickest Italian accent I’ve ever heard and emanates a palpable confidence as well as a callous indifference. I’ve never been afraid of anyone, but this man intimidates me—and it’s made worse by the fact that I’m in his home, his space.
I follow the man out of the living room, walking around a large fireplace composed of gray and black stones, seemingly made out of mortar, and enter a room lined with deep red and violet hues mixed with a theme similar to that of the pipe I am for some reason still holding. Bright Mediterranean colors and decor decorate the area. The bright white oak floors continue on into the kitchen, which is furnished with a thick, dark brown walnut table. Its chairs are cushioned with dark red backing and their dark wooden trim is shiny, clearly well polished. On the fireplace mantle, which divides the living room and kitchen, is the giant skull of some large beast, maybe an ox. It has two long curvy horns. Lying horizontally in front of the skull is a very long, winding shofar.
Directly adjacent to the table are two glass sliding doors that make up the wall. When we approach, Giovanni opens them and I step out onto a dark brown deck with black iron chairs surrounding a large black iron table. The table has gargoyle heads woven into its design. On top it is a large and thick glass ashtray with a burning cigarette resting on its edge. There is a crude bench that appears handmade and lines the entirety of the railing that Giovanni’s father was leaning on earlier, and Giovanni goes to sit on it.
The man looks at me and says, “I am Francesco Russo.” You have met my son, Giovanni.” I nod as he refers to himself and then Giovanni with a wave of his hand. “And that is my wife, Greta.” He points and I see a woman rounding the corner of the deck, which seems to surround the whole house. She’s the one who called out to Giovanni right before I was going to sucker punch him; it is clearly his mom. Up close I see how gorgeous she is. She’s full bodied and has sandy blonde hair that waves down just past her shoulders. She wears white sunglasses and a fancy red dress, and as she comes closer I see that she has matching red nail polish on the toes of her bare feet.
When she approaches, she smiles at me and says, “Welcome home, Nicholas.” The words flow from her mouth like syrup from a jar held high, and I melt. Never before have I been so thoroughly and instantly seduced by a woman, and in front of her husband and son! Did she say, “home”? I ask myself. We talk and somehow I stop acting like myself. With her I feel childlike, like a polite little boy.
Francesco points to a chair by the veranda table and says, “Please,” and the three of us sit at the table together. Greta smokes cigarettes and Francesco uses shining silver cutlery to eat from a plate of thinly sliced meat. The meat is decorated with a few olives and accompanied by a large glass of red wine. Giovanni sits off to the sid
e, peering out over the park and into what seems to be the entire neighborhood through the trees beyond.
Somehow, unlike my usual self, I push the conversation at first. I’m not one for conversation and yet now the words have a life of their own. “So, where are you from?” “Are you guys married?” (an odd question). And “How long have you lived in the neighborhood?” The Russos’ attitude is hard to read: a mix of aloof, yet thoughtful, as Giovanni was with me in the park, and somewhat stoic, but kind. Francesco says he is from Naples, Italy, and met Greta in Chicago, which I believe is where she’s from. They had their children, Giovanni and his sister, before their recent move to my neighborhood.
Greta is polite and graceful in all of her answers and although I’m trying to be polite too, I begin to wonder if I’m coming across as overly inquisitive. I slow my questions and then my mind goes blank and I am left with nothing else to say. Moments of silence pass, each one more awkward than the last. Finally, after the moments turn to minutes, I give up trying to catch a glimpse of Greta’s eyes, which I’m sure are beautiful, through her lenses, which are too dark for me to see through.
“So, Mr. Russo . . .”
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