“Why a ballerina charm?”
“She wants to be a dancer.”
“Is she any good?”
“She’s excellent!”
“Have you ever seen her dance?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know she’s excellent?”
Michael’s cheeks flushed as if he were about to erupt in one of his frequent outbursts, and Frankie wisely decided not to tease him any further.
“She’s going to love it,” he declared. “What’s the special occasion?”
“It’s her birthday.”
“Do you know if she really likes you as much as you like her?”
“We’re going to go steady when we’re fifteen. We already talked about it. That’s how old she has to be before her father won’t hit her for chasing boys.”
Frankie knew his little brother well enough to understand there was some other question he needed answered, one he was too embarrassed to ask.
“What is it?”
“What if she asks me to dance at the CYO party?”
“Then dance with her.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Come on,” Frankie said, motioning for his brother to follow him into the living room. He shuffled through the record albums until he found something appropriate for a slow dance. Frankie was incredibly patient, never getting frustrated, dropping the needle on the record track over and over again. He had a million things to do before picking up his prom date, but everything would have to wait until Michael knew how to lead his partner, where to place his hands and how to move his feet, even if it took the entire afternoon.
MICHAEL AND FRANKIE, 1981
The last scheduled arrivals at Thirtieth Street Station had been posted on the board: an eastbound train from Harrisburg and a northbound one from Washington, D.C., on time and twenty minutes late, respectively. One final departure for Penn Station, New York, was boarding in ten minutes. The ticket counters had closed at ten and wouldn’t reopen until five in the morning. The station shops were dark, their doors locked, and the only vendor still open for business was the newspaper kiosk selling early editions of the Sunday Inquirer and New York Times. A transit cop sauntered through the nearly deserted station, ominously tapping his nightstick against his leg as he cast a wary eye at the few remaining weary travelers checking their wristwatches, waiting for their boarding calls.
An older man had given Frankie a tip once after blowing him in the men’s room: have a valid ticket in your pocket if you’re confronted by one of the uniformed Amtrak Nazis and threatened with arrest for loitering. But the cops never bothered Frankie. He wore a backpack slung over one shoulder and sometimes carried one of Mikey’s Penguin Classics, easily passing as a Penn or Drexel undergraduate heading home for the weekend. The only time an officer ever approached him was to warn him to be on the lookout for queers on the prowl late at night. Stay out of the bathroom unless it’s an emergency and, if you do have to go and you see someone suspicious, come looking for me.
Frankie cruised the perimeters of the station, making eye contact with some men and avoiding it with others. He stopped to stare in the window of the bookshop, conscious of a tall fellow following him at a safe enough distance to not be too conspicuous. He studied the dust jackets of the best-sellers on display, waiting for the man to approach. Charged with nerves and sexual energy, he let his eyes drift upward and saw his admirer’s face reflected in the shopwindow glass.
He was much younger than Frankie had expected, not like the older trolls who usually stalked him. The man pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and offered one to Frankie, who declined. He struck a match and lit the tip of his cigarette, then casually walked away, occasionally looking back to demonstrate his interest. He stopped to linger in front of the florist shop, staring boldly now that a mutual attraction had been firmly established. Frankie, brimming with confidence, walked toward him, ready to introduce himself, but the man crushed his cigarette beneath the sole of his shoe and turned his back before Frankie could speak. He crossed the station with purpose, taking long strides, and disappeared into the corridor leading to the men’s room.
Frankie watched the clock on the arrivals and departures board, patiently waiting for a few minutes to pass before following him. He expected to find him at the urinal, stroking his cock, waiting for Frankie to sidle up beside him and unzip his pants, the first step in the ancient ritual of tearoom seduction. But the men’s room appeared deserted. Frankie assumed his pursuer had lost interest, had a change of heart. He was about to leave when he saw the door of the last stall of the cavernous bathroom slowly open. The man, knowing Frankie would follow, stood with his back pressed to the wall, his jeans around his ankles. His swagger had disappeared. He seemed nervous, jittery, rushed, as if he were anxious to get it over with.
“Suck me,” he insisted, grabbing Frankie by the shoulders and pushing him to his knees.
Frankie dropped his backpack and took the man’s flaccid penis in his mouth. The man grew frustrated when he couldn’t get hard. He grabbed Frankie by the hair and shoved his limp, but thick, cock down his throat until Frankie gagged.
“Get up. I’m done,” he said, pulling his pants to his waist. “Give me twenty dollars, faggot,” he said, tugging at his zipper.
“I don’t have that much money,” Frankie said, hoping the transit cop would come strolling into the bathroom to rescue him.
“Fuck! Fuck!” the man said, slamming his fist against the door of the stall.
“I have seventeen dollars. Here, you can have it,” Frankie offered, pulling the bills from his wallet.
The man snatched the money from Frankie’s hand and crumpled it into a ball, shoving it into his pocket without counting it.
“Fucking faggot,” he spit, slapping Frankie’s face twice, hard, with an open hand. Not satisfied that he’d sufficiently demonstrated his disgust, he clenched his fist and punched Frankie in the gut.
“I ought to kick your fucking pretty face in,” the man threatened, punching Frankie again, this time in the ribs, then pushing him aside, leaving Frankie gasping for breath as he fled.
After years of begging for hand jobs and a chance to feel up her tits, Michael finally discovered the magic word to persuade Barbara Giorgini to “go all the way” on the linoleum floor of his father’s barbershop.
Pre-engaged.
He’d expected that afterward Barbie would be quiet, contemplative, respectful of the solemn event that had taken place between them. Losing their virginity was a sacred rite of passage, binding them together the rest of their lives. No one else could ever be the other’s first.
But she chattered incessantly as he walked her home. Should they share the news of their pre-engagement or keep it secret? Would their parents give their blessing or would they separate them, hoping time and distance would be fatal to young love? He was going to buy her a ring, wasn’t he? Should she come with him to choose it or should he surprise, and possibly disappoint, her? She kissed him on her doorstep after planning a trip to Jewelers’ Row Saturday afternoon. She didn’t expect a diamond since they weren’t actually engaged, not yet. A birthstone, innocent seeming, was an appropriate symbol of their commitment; they would call it an early birthday present if her parents asked. She had a fleeting moment of nostalgia for her maidenhead as they said good night and made Michael swear he loved her and always would. He answered her truthfully, Of course, I do and I always will, assuring her he could never love anyone else. Except, of course, for Valerie Bertinelli, who was only a fantasy and not an actual possibility, a secret crush he knew better than to admit.
What the hell did “pre-engaged” mean anyway? he wondered as he crossed Federal Street, slowly making his way home. It was only a promise to make a promise, two degrees away from the Sacrament of Marriage. Still, the idea would set Papa off like a bottle rocket. He’d accuse Michael of being a fool, of stepping into a mousetrap set by a conniving girl, his promising future (top of his cla
ss at the Academy, the prospect of a good college, becoming a doctor or lawyer) over before it had even begun. The elder Giorginis would condemn him as a scoundrel who’d tricked their daughter into surrendering her virtue, the first step on the long descent to becoming a slut. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe they shouldn’t have done it, at least not tonight. He should have waited for a more romantic moment to make his move. She’d resent him one day for taking her virginity on a cold linoleum floor. Papa and his fourth wife were sailing the Caribbean on a seven-day cruise and Frankie rarely came home before midnight from his mysterious nighttime prowls. He could have taken her up to the bedroom he shared with his brother, allowed her the comfort of lying on a soft mattress as they made love the first time.
He didn’t feel any different from how he had a few hours ago when he was still a virgin. There hadn’t been any fireworks. It wasn’t like the movies, soft focus with a string section as background music. He wasn’t even sure they had done it right. He knew she hadn’t liked it by the grimace on her face. His dick hurt from the effort it took to get it all the way in and he’d shot in the condom as soon as he penetrated her. He felt relieved that it was over, nothing more. He’d always stood quietly when his friends and teammates bragged about their escapades, which he knew were mostly exaggeration or outright lies. They argued and debated about who put out, which girls could be persuaded to give a blow job and which ones were prissy cockteasers who acted as if they were handling a poisonous anaconda if they agreed to jerk you off. They talked about the places they’d screwed and the acrobatic positions they’d tried. Michael shrugged off their persistent questions about how many times he and Barbie Giorgini had done it and if she did more than lie on her back as if she were dead. His friends assumed Michael was too deeply in love to share the details of what they imagined was an active, enthusiastic sex life. They’d never suspected the real explanation for his reticence was that his lack of experience left him nothing to talk about. At least now he could never be exposed as a virgin or accused of having no interest in girls.
Not that anyone ever questioned his masculinity or whispered he might be “a fairy nice boy” like his brother. He was All-Catholic, feared and respected on the field. He lettered in wrestling after football season. The entire neighborhood and his class at the Academy had witnessed the consequences of provoking him. They’d heard the stories of how he’d kicked more than a few asses of dumb shits who were stupid enough to call his brother a queer or faggot. (Ignore them, Mikey, they’re ignorant, Frankie would say, proud and unfazed.) It was his duty to stand up for his flesh and blood, but he resented Frankie becoming a homo. Sometimes he understood how his brother’s tormentors felt. More than once he’d caught one of the hateful epithets about to slip from his tongue when Frankie did something that angered or frustrated him.
If he had a normal brother, he could confide in him about his confusion over the events of the night. He could ask Frankie to explain why losing his virginity had left him anxious and depressed and Frankie would assure him he’d felt the same way his first time with a girl. But there was no way he could ever talk about sex or love with someone who did the disgusting, gross things Michael had seen in the collection of magazines he found when he stole the key to the locked suitcase Frankie kept under his bed. Men with pricks up their asses and cocks in their mouths, sometimes both at the same time. He hated that the brother he’d once loved more than anyone else in the world, and probably still did, even more than Barbie Giorgini, was a pervert.
He entered the house through the barbershop and gathered the soiled towels they had lain on to toss in the washing machine. The pipes of the old house creaked whenever water was running upstairs. Frankie must have come home while he was gone and was still awake upstairs, probably washing his face and brushing his teeth before bed.
“Are you sick?” he asked, surprised to find Frankie with his head in the toilet, vomiting into the bowl.
“I’m all right,” Frankie answered. But his upper lip was bloody and his right eye was swollen shut. He tried pulling himself off the floor, but slid back onto his ass, groaning and clutching his chest. “Go to bed, Mikey. I’m all right.”
“Your shirt’s torn! What happened to you?”
“Nothing. I tripped on the steps coming up from the subway. That’s all. Just help me stand up.”
Frankie gasped as Michael lifted him and steadied him on his feet. Frankie ran his palm along his left rib cage, as if he were feeling for something. He took short, shallow breaths, wincing as he inhaled. Michael remembered an Academy teammate’s painful breathing when he’d broken a rib during a preseason scrimmage. The fractured bone had punctured his lung, putting him out his entire senior season.
“We got to go to the hospital. Something might be broken. You might be bleeding.”
Michael was visibly shaken by the thought of Frankie dying. He would rather have a homo for a brother than no brother at all.
“I’m all right, Mikey. Stop overreacting. It’s just a bruise. I’m not going to die.”
“You don’t know that,” Michael said, growing more anxious. “The same thing happened to Sean Matthews and his lung collapsed. We have to go to the hospital.”
“Look, don’t tell Papa about this when he gets home. Promise?”
“I won’t,” Michael said.
Michael understood why Frankie insisted Papa could never know about tonight. He hadn’t fallen in the subway. Someone had punched and kicked him because he was a queer.
“Did they rob you, Frankie?” Michael asked.
“What?”
“Did they rob you? Take your money?”
“No, no,” Frankie said, suppressing a bitter smile. “I gave him the money; he didn’t have to steal it.”
“Then why did he beat you up?”
Frankie walked to the refrigerator, opened a can of beer, and gently lowered himself onto the sofa.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing, big shot? You’re sixteen years old,” he said, chastising Michael for following his lead and casually popping the top of a can of Schaefer.
“I am sixteen going on seventeen,” he sang, mocking his brother’s love of show tunes in a futile attempt to lighten the mood. “We’re celebrating. I got pre-engaged tonight, Frankie,” he said, hoping the news might cheer his brother up.
“Jesus, Mikey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Frankie said, squirming in discomfort as he tried to find a comfortable position. “Papa is going to kill you.”
“Fuck Papa,” Michael said, full of bravado, though he dreaded his father’s reaction if he ever learned of his and Barbie’s plans. “Besides, I’m not gonna tell him. And neither are you.”
“You know what that little girl is up to, don’t you? She’s not going to let you go easily. You be careful, Michael. You want to get out of here, don’t you? That’s what you always say.”
Michael watched Frankie as he sipped his beer. He looked smaller, more vulnerable than usual, someone who needed to be protected. Strangers rarely recognized them as brothers despite the prominent nose they’d both inherited from their father. Michael was already taller than six foot and was still growing, fortunate to have been blessed with a recessive gene that had produced one towering uncle on his mother’s side. He had wide shoulders and a narrow waist and legs as thick as tree trunks. His olive complexion tanned easily in the sun and the black pouches under his dark brown eyes never completely faded with eight hours of sleep. He looked like Pacino in the Serpico poster, at least to his admiring girlfriend, although, unlike the movie star, he kept his black, wiry hair—his heritage from Papa—cut short, close to the skull. Frankie was five-eight by a generous reading of the tape measure. He was their mother’s boy, fine-boned and fair. His thick, wavy hair, once the color of straw, had darkened a bit with age and his pale blue eyes were set off by his long, curling lashes.
“Bring my car around to the front door, Mikey,” Frankie said as if he had suddenly awakened from a trance.
“Huh?”
“I left my backpack at the train station. I have to get it back.”
“Why were you at the train station?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just help me. I think they lock the bathroom doors after midnight. We have to go now.”
Frankie told him to wait in the car when they arrived at the station, that he’d be back in a minute, but Michael insisted on parking and going with him. He wasn’t going to let Frankie be beaten twice in one night. The men’s room hadn’t been locked yet. An old man was mopping the floor and the place smelled of chlorine and soap.
“I left my backpack in here tonight. Did you find it in one of the stalls?” Frankie asked, sounding as casual as possible, hoping not to raise any suspicions.
The old man studied them for a long minute, his eyes filled with disgust.
“I ain’t seen no backpack,” he said, his voice defying any potential challenge.
“In the last stall. Down there. I’ll go take a look.”
“Them floors are clean, kid. Don’t go fucking them up. There weren’t no backpack in there,” the man said, a simple statement clearly intended as a threat.
“Can I just look?”
“You callin’ me a liar?”
“No. No,” Frankie said, defeated and dejected.
As they walked toward the door, Michael clearly heard the janitor snicker and murmur the word faggot under his breath. He ran back, fists clenched, ready to punch the bastard, but stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the fear in his old eyes. So instead he reached down and grabbed the man’s bucket and smashed it against the wall, splashing filthy black water across the room.
“Fuck you, asshole. I ought to break your fucking neck for talking to my brother like that,” Michael said, his voice steady and calm, as he emptied the contents of the trash can on the floor and plucked the backpack from the wet paper towels and empty coffee cups. “Open your fucking mouth again and I’ll bust you up,” he promised as he slowly and deliberately followed his brother into the station, his cocky jaunt daring the old man to raise his voice to call for help. He wasn’t happy Frankie was a homo, but it was their own business—his and his brother’s—and he would rearrange the face of anyone who hurt him again.
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