Needle Too (2 page)

“…because it can be rough when there isn’t a big guy around. So uhhh, you know, if you ever need to talk about anything, anything at all, I’m always here for you and I’m not the only one, you know—your…”

I was suddenly being exposed to the death of a loved one and all that comes with it for the very first time in my life. Of course, my dad had been dead for
years
but that was different and I was now beginning to realize I’d never truly grieved for him; my mother had immediately nipped that one in the bud and up until this very moment I still hadn’t even addressed the fact. But I was older now and felt more and Grandma had always been my knight in shining armor…or at least
tried
to be and that’s all that mattered. And I know she was aware of how violent my mother was but really, what could she do about it? By that point she was already well into her sixties and nobody was prepared to take on
my
mommy dearest. Still, I know it really upset her but she must have felt helpless and she was right. The 1970’s were a different place and time and besides, she was
scared
of my mother.
Who the fuck
wasn’t scared of my mother?
But again, Grandma knew what was going on in the Goodman household and I think that encouraged her to dote on me a bit more than the other grandchildren. For about as far back as I could remember Grandma was constantly buying me presents, cooking my favorite guinea dishes and by the time I’d turned eight years old, furnishing me with what some might consider inappropriate reading material. But generally speaking, Grandma always tried to expand my view of the world in ways that would soften some of its harsher realities, so perhaps she felt things like
Rosemary’s Baby
,
Midnight Express
and
Flowers in the Attic
might offer another perspective to help measure my own horror story against. Grandma was so unbelievably important to me and now she was gone, and I still didn’t have the skills or resources to properly absorb and appreciate the fact that, like my father, she wasn’t coming back.

“Maybe sometime you and I can catch a ballgame or something…”

For years Grandma did the best she could. Rather than prepare one grand meal on Sunday for her three children and seven grandchildren which had always been the case, right around the time I turned six she began preparing one on Saturday
and
one on Sunday to accommodate whatever shifting alliances were drawn-up between her feuding offspring—all of whom could usually never be in the same room without the threat of bloodshed. And now, in a mocking tribute to her memory, Grandma was gone forever as her feuding children and family members finally decided to reconvene for the funeral…and they should have been ashamed of themselves.

As a result, I was suddenly reacquainted with my favorite cousins and Aunt, though by this point they’d been missing from my life for so long that I couldn’t even recall exactly why I’d given them such status to begin with. In fact, the room was filled with family
members who were mostly unknown to me, quite possibly due to some
unknown
injustice they committed against my mother (or vice-versa) at some point in the past.

“…because I know I haven’t been around much and I should have been. No kid should have to grow up without a dad. So I’d like to make up for that if you’d let me.”

“I’m sorry sir—
now who are you
?” I finally asked as he finally managed to wrestle me away from my reflections of Grandma.

“I’m your Uncle Sal!” he said triumphantly. “I’m your Grandmother’s sister’s husband!”

“Who?”

“Your
Aunt Dolores’
husband.”

“Oh…My Aunt Dolores? Okay, then…It’s nice to meet you, Uncle Sal,” I decided to say without checking for references.

“Oh, no—we met once before.”

“When was that, Uncle Sal?”

“Well, it was a while ago,” said my newly-revealed uncle. “You were just a little baby at the time but believe me, I remember it like it was yesterday. Those crazy, Jew-curls.”

“When I was a
baby
?”

“Yeah…so whaddaya say? Maybe we could see a Yankee game together and eat some hotdogs or something. Just the guys! You know, I’ve got season tickets. REALLY great seats…I bet you’ll catch a foul ball! How does that sound?”

“It sounds great, Uncle Sal—
except for the fact that I’m twenty-years-old!”
I said without putting on my indoor funeral voice and though I was clearly upsetting other family members within earshot—I didn’t know who
they
were either. “And besides…I hate the fucking Yankees.”

As threatened, Perry made good on his intention to deliver us to Florida and, after the surrogate custodian finished illustrating the potential dangers of mixing Poodles with Labrador Retrievers and Cocaine, I made good on my own intentions and inconspicuously snuck onto a half-filled bus heading back to New York. Of course, had Perry noticed me attempting to slither out of the bus terminal he would’ve tried to put a stop to it. Fortunately enough, however, while he was busy in the bathroom with a teacher from Tampa trying to satiate a voracious libido that had suddenly awoken after hibernating for
years
, I was able to make my escape. I ended up getting as far as Newark, New Jersey when I was politely informed of my “error” by the bus operator, at which point I was able to take local transportation back to the city because like I said upon first hearing the news—Florida was out of the fucking question. Even while on the brink of a methadone overdose I remembered making that fact perfectly clear to Perry…
twice
.

Though my body was soon in Manhattan my brain would be marinating in Methadonia for another day or two, which wasn’t at all surprising given the fact that I’d consumed four pretty potent bottles of the chalky, orange variety in as many days. And now with really nowhere else to go, the extreme degree of intoxication made homelessness MUCH easier to come to grips with; so in a fitting tribute to what was apparently my new station in life, I walked about a mile to Central Park where I decided to lay down on a desolate patch of grass in one of the more wooded areas and remain there.

Although I’d always been convinced that hitting rock bottom was
synonymous with checking into the Whitehouse Hotel, I cannot begin to explain how unbelievably indifferent I was about not being able to afford even
that
caliber of roof—or lack thereof—even for just a night. Certainly, though, my absurd complacency with
absolute
homelessness would be short-lived and commensurate with the subsiding effects of the drugs and at some point, as other old habits apparently die hard, the thought of once again freeloading at Jeff’s apartment. And though I was certain he would’ve put up with me, in reality and for excellent reasons I don’t believe I would have been entirely welcome. Besides, I was in no mood to discuss my present condition nor was I willing to address the tragic death of my friends or my bereavement which, even with a deceased father and grandmother, was something I had little to no experience with.

Within a day or so, literally with hat in hand and little else in terms of choice, I would eventually drag myself out of the park and use whatever money I still had for a train ticket to Stamford. Honestly, though, the thought of it made my heart race. I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother since that glass table exploded under my ass two years prior, though I would soon learn that my Uncle John—her brother—had recently died of cancer while I was…
unavailable
. Of course, unlike the death of Eric and Virginia Holst, the news of
his
passing would have little impact on me, and I suppose that was partially due to where my head was at. But the more enduring reason was simply a byproduct of the dysfunctional and self-destructive way in which my family functioned.

When my father died, any contact with
his
side of the family was either immediately extinguished or allowed to wither away. I don’t know for certain my mother was the cause of this, but it would seem likely given not only the hatred she harbored for her deceased husband, but the twisted dysfunction that existed within her own bloodline because
the Comunales were a sick fucking bunch
. Of course, Italians are notorious for having familial bonds that can fluctuate between loving and lethal within the blink of an eye, but at the end of the day—in
most
cases—that bond is
unshakeable. If you decide to fuck with one of them you’re usually fucking with the lot and at any point should expect a couple of Monte Carlos and the aroma of garlic and oil to come wafting into your driveway. The
Comunales
, however, were a
very
different breed of Italian and though they clearly had the violence component down pat, the sense of closeness and the health of the actual relationships, even within the
immediate
family, were in a state of perpetual decay. In fact, even some extended branches of the tree were infected with the same sort of sickness, one born from a mixture of ego, self-righteousness, hypersensitivity and hair-trigger temper. Family spats almost always escalated to a point where tribes within the clan would take steps to secede from the union by executing policies ranging from self-imposed semi-isolation to complete estrangement or at the very least, a suffocating sense of familial indifference that went on for years or never ended at all.
EVERYONE
on all sides was always primed and ready to be offended and that never,
ever
, changed.

In 1973, while—unbeknownst to me—my father was perishing in the hospital and succumbing to lung cancer, my mother decided it was an appropriate time to relocate. She thought it best to move us from Scarsdale to Queens in order to be closer to her family during this trying and difficult period, particularly her sister and my Aunt Rosie whom she utterly despised. Oh, wait a minute…does that sound odd? Well then sit tight because it gets better.

We ended up moving to Cryder House in Whitestone which was about eight blocks from where Aunt Rosie lived in a red brick house with her husband Paul and my older cousins, Jimmy and Chris. By this point throughout the course of my life I’d spent countless hours in and around that red brick house wreaking havoc with my cousins, and I can’t tell you how many times Aunt Rosie had to come running out of it to pull those aggressive little assholes off of me which was impossible to do because (A) they wouldn’t let go and (B) I thought it was nothing other than a privilege to be pummeled by them. And I LOVED my Aunt Rosie. I thought she was funny.
SHE
taught me how to ride a bike. And she made me
feel special sometimes, especially after my dad died. In fact, I loved her SO much that I never even held a grudge against her for betraying me on that fateful Christmas in 1973 when she told my mother that my father and I had been cheating on her with his secretary, Phyllis. And I can very clearly recall not only the moment I clued my aunt in on “The Big Surprise for Mommy,” but also when Rosie passed that information along to my mother.

I stood next to the door of the room where my aunt was sealing my fate and for at least an hour listened and learned things that no five-year-old should
ever
know. For starters, I learned that my father was a
very
bad man. I also learned that Phyllis was a dirty and disgusting lady, and she had something called psoriasis all over her arms and legs and that her cat probably had it as well. But what I’ve always been most struck by—especially as an adult—was the fact that throughout the entire, dirty disclosure there was never any weeping or moments of heartache. There was just anger—calm, cool, collected anger. Definitely loud at times, but by no means were there any sounds of sorrow.

Come to think of it, my mother was never one for tears. Honestly, I don’t think I ever recall her crying
real
tears, tears generated by a profound sense of sadness or loss, except of course when she was wasted and feeling sorry for herself. Interestingly enough, I do remember her shedding some tears once or twice while she was beating the shit out of me but for some reason that didn’t seem odd or inappropriate. Actually, those tears seemed more like tears of
frustration
, as if she was crying because she couldn’t dispense justice quickly enough or with the proper degree of intensity. So I suppose it’s really not terribly surprising that the night my mother learned of the Grand Deception her response was fueled by nothing other than measured rage.

Not too long after Aunt Rosie outed me and decided to be the one to inform Mrs. Goodman of her deceased husband’s infidelity, she was immediately catapulted to #1 on Mother’s All-Time Most Hated List which was nothing to laugh at because
that
shit was a
fucking scroll. But there were other horrible consequences of the disclosure that took the family dysfunction to staggering new heights. Of course, the details of my father’s infidelity obviously sealed
my
fate as I was immediately branded a co-conspirator, which gave Mother carte blanche to build a future around kicking my ass. But if you’d asked me back then I might have told you that the most devastating result of my father’s marital transgression wasn’t the abuse but rather, being separated from my aunt and cousins which began not long after Rosie made my mother aware of it.