Bio

My parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Sicily in 1947. My father was a merchant marine. My mother worked in a small neighborhood grocery store. They met in Brooklyn and on August 26, 1951, yours truly was cast unto the earth. In the 1950’s, my part of Brooklyn was beautifully illustrated in Martin Scorsese’s, Goodfellas. Wiseguys were everywhere. After I was born, my father left the life of a sailor and started working the docks of New York. In the 1950’s, the docks were just like On the Waterfront.

My dad was pals with guys like Albert Anastasia and Frank Costello. In those days, mob guys lived in working class blue collar neighborhoods. There was no visible distinction between the hoods and the regular population. You learned who the hoods were because they were only guys around the neighborhood in the day time. I liked running errands for them like going to the store for cigarettes or beer because they always gave me money. In time, the depth of their dark nature would be clear to me.

As I got older, I felt like I was supposed to be like my perception of these guys. They were tough and without remorse. The code was absolute, unspoken and always a mystery to me. I had a serious impediment to this lifestyle:I could never do any harm to any one without feeling guilt of remorse. When I lost a fight I felt ashamed, when I beat somebody up I felt ugly inside. I was lost, confused and always threatened.

When I was six, my mother enrolled me in St. Leonard’s Catholic School. It should have been called Our Lady of Perpetual Pain and Sorrow. The nuns were of the Dominica Order. They were mostly Irish and always ready to beat a kid. They could hit you while doing some other task, a sort of abuse multi-tasking. They had unusual names like, Sister Kevin John or Sister Joseph Lucille.

These unhappy individuals treated the mostly Italian kids as if they were the cause of every woe in their miserably small lives. The nuns inflicted a trinity of assaults, physical, emotional and spiritual. They would beat me until I could not hold back the tears. Then would beat me and ridicule me for crying. They would tell me that I would wind up in Hell or prison and that God Almighty saw every bad thing I was doing. When I eventually died the horrible death I deserved, God would be there with His ledger to determine which circle of hell I will spend eternity.  These experiences would haunt me and direct my decisions for many years.

Then came the Kennedy years and the Beatles, everything began to change. Between 14 and 16, I read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, On The Road, Howl For Carl Solomon listened to Lenny Bruce on topics like sex, politics and the Catholic Church, smoked weed and took Dexedrine. I was off and running.

By my second year in high school, I was already a social misfit and that was fine with me. Meanwhile, the complexion of my Italian neighborhood was shifting. Black people moving in to the neighborhood sparked a suburban exodus. We moved as well. Not to the suburbs, (my father could not drive), we moved to the projects in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not to be confused with colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. I was transported from the realm of the wiseguys to the wonderland of Puerto Ricans and Hasidic Jews, surrounded by a circle of heroin.

As a teenager, I was passionate about music, literature, traveling and drugs. Like millions of my time, I thought that drugs were an answer. I also had an unfounded and grandiose belief that I would play a part in changing the world for the better. What wound up happening was that I wandered the planet and was stoned for the next twenty-five years.

My journey took me to some interesting places along with some terrifying and deadly places. Somehow, I’m still standing. When I was twenty-eight, I got married. I thought that if I settled down that my life would somehow self correct. It didn’t work. By some miracle, we managed to have two kids that are well adjusted and emotionally sane people. Even though our marriage was fraught with pain and hostility, we did always love the kids and tried to give them the best of what we had. Unfortunately, my best was often sadly lacking. These days I comfort myself that alls well that ends well.

My biggest regret in life is the hurt I caused. Sometimes inadvertently, sometimes carelessly and worst of all, sometimes intentionally. I have not lived that way for a long time. When I leave my apartment I always whisper to myself, do no harm. I seek progress rather than perfection. I wouldn’t recognize perfection if it bit me on my ass. I just try to do better than I did yesterday.