FROM THE DAY FRANCIS Anthony Mozzarelli was yanked out from between his mamma’s hairy legs, he was like a tender dogwood that had to be carefully watered. By the time he was eight, he was as pretty, as strong, and as fresh as a summer rose blooming.
He was a regular little charm bomb.
“Ain’t he fuckin’ beautiful?!” Mary Mozzarelli cried to anyone who would listen.
His papa, Xavier Patrizio Mozzarelli, the neighborhood’s best barber, called him ragazzo debole.
Weak boy.
Then he beat Francis to a pulp to try and toughen the kid up. Especially when the old man was drunk. “You’re too close to your fucking mamma!” he yelled as his fists flew, drawing blood. “That old woman’s a crazy-assed octopus!” he warned his son. “She’s tryin’ to strangle the manhood out of you! I won’t let her do it!”
Xavier Patrizio brutally beat his boy the night his wife shot the old man dead. The last thing he said before the bullet slugged into his head was, “No son of mine is gonna be a fucking faggot!”
After Mary’s husband “disappeared,” she took over his Star Barbershop. The old Octopus vulgaris slithered in and literally cleaned the shit out of the place. She lined the tonic bottles from tallest to shortest, polished the chrome on all the chairs, and swept every stray hair into the street.
She hung a hand-painted sign over the shop mirror:
A GREAT HAIRCUT GIVES A MAN DIGNITY
She always kept a pot of meatballs simmering in tomato gravy on the old coal-eating stove. She charged a quarter for a shave, fifty cents for a cut, and sixty for both. For an extra dime, she threw in a mugful of meatballs swimming in tomato gravy.
On Mondays, when the shop was closed, she packed a traveling barber bag and clipped the patients at the state mental hospital.
She was not completely without empathy.
Want a great cut and shave? Go see Mary Mozzarelli!
Neighborhood wiseguys lined up. They shrugged into the shop scompigliati and bopped out gleaming with virilità.
Mary loved cutting men’s hair. Especially her beautiful son’s.
As he grew, Francis tried to be tough. But he had no friends. Only the little Nancy boy his mamma despised.
Terelli Lombardi.
Little Bird, Francis called him.
Tweet! Tweet!
“Stay away from that fucking invert,” Mary warned. “Don’t make me get my gun, son.”
Despite Mary’s warning, Francis let Terelli take him under his sissy wing.
“I’m gonna make a real Hero out of you, you’ll see.”
The little bird taught Francis how to maximize what the good Lord had already given him.
It started with a solid regimen of push-ups and sit-ups. Then a steady routine of lifting rocks and bricks. Then cinderblocks and automobile bumpers.
“How many push-ups did you do today?” Terelli asked when they met to work on hair greasing. “Your mamma’s pomade stinks!” He advised him what to wear. “Only T-shirts and blue jeans!” And taught him proper hygiene. “Always wash your dick after working out,” the little bird informed him. “And always after you pee. And especially after fucking.”
Francis couldn’t wait to fuck.
“If you insist upon poking your penis into girls, stop cuffing your jeans,” Terelli said. “Keep your thumbs hooked in your belt loops and strut when you walk. No swishing,” he insisted. “Walk like your mamma. I’ll bet that woman’s got a massive cannoli dangling between her hairy legs!”
Francis liked cuffing his pants. He was powerfully proud of the way his hips swung like church bells when he walked around. No one sauntered along like Francis Anthony Mozzarelli. He swung and strutted like he didn’t have a care in the goddamned world. Like he owned the entire universe.
No one owned him.
Except maybe his crazy old octopus of a mamma.
“Well, I tried!” Terelli cried.
The little bird took Francis to the Montauk Theater in downtown Passaic and showed him Clark Gable. “You see the way that man carries himself.”
“Like a gangster,” Francis whispered in the movie-toned dark.
“Like a man on a masculine mission,” Terelli whispered back.
Even though Francis was fascinated by the way Clark charmed Carole Lombard and manhandled Joan Crawford and Constance Bennett, he was unconvinced. For his part, he taught Terelli how to cheat at cards, win at marbles, and toss a mean bocce ball.
They practiced smoking and drinking and occasionally kissing.
“It’s called Frenching,” Terelli declared when Francis jumped back after tasting his little bird’s tongue. “Trust me! The girls will love it!” Terelli insisted.
They did.
And it always led to other delicious things.
Arrivederci, virginity!
Hello, virility!
For the budding young stud’s thirteenth birthday, Terelli gave Francis a whopping French kiss and a new pair of penny loafers with dimes wedged into them.
“When you find a coin, stick it in heads-up, make a wish, and think of me,” the little bird teased. “Tweet! Tweet!”
When Francis turned fourteen, Terelli introduced him to Loprinzi’s Gymnasium.
The sign over the door read:
FORTES FORTUNA IUVAT
“That means fortune favors the brave,” Terelli informed his beautiful friend as they entered the masculine heat of the musky place.
A large oil painting of a nude Lorenzo Loprinzi hung on the wall above the front desk.
No fig leaf, only his hands artfully fisted in front of his cannoli.
“Lorenzo was my first love,” Terelli whispered with moon-eyed reverence.
Arms akimbo, back arched, the oil-painted strongman’s abdomen was a slab of symmetrical rocks, his legs were as thick as tree trunks, his biceps baseball-popped out of his arms.
“He wrestles cows to the ground for extra exercise,” Terelli whispered. “He lifts sheep over his head. He tosses full-grown pigs the way most men toss basketballs.”
Francis regarded the painting with stark admiration. “I want to be strong just like him.”
Terelli lit a cigarette. “Fortune favors the brave, my pretty friend!”
By the time Francis turned fifteen, he worked out every day. He could bench-press twice his weight without grunting.
“You call that a sit-up?” Terelli barked like an army drill sergeant. “Keep those knees together, soldier!”
By Francis’s sixteenth birthday, he had sprouted from a pretty-boy Popeye wannabe into a young Tarzan. His ass alone was breathtaking.
“Simply stunning,” Terelli whispered when they kissed.
The little bird knitted him a loincloth and three jockstraps to work out in.
“Simply stunning!”
Francis fucked girls like a steam train piston. He fucked his way through Passaic and Clifton like a runaway locomotive on a funny honeymoon.
Terelli Lombardi was seething with jealousy. “I want you to stop seeing other women.”
“What do you mean?”
“I love you, Francis Anthony Mozzarelli. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“Listen, Little Bird,” Francis calmly said. “I don’t think I need to practice with you anymore.”
“Practice?! Is that all I mean to you?! I thought you loved me!”
Francis laughed. “Love you? I don’t love anybody.”
“Except yourself! You fucking beast!”
After a moment of careful consideration, Francis did what he thought best. “I don’t want to see you anymore, my little friend.”
“Are you breaking up with me?
“How can I break up with you?! We were never together!”
“Fuck you, Francis Anthony Mozzarelli. I hope you die someday soon!” And with that the little bird flew away.
Standing in front of the long oval mirror on the back of his bedroom door with his dick and balls snugged into one of his little buddy’s knitted jocks, Francis raised his arms like Lorenzo Loprinzi. He studied his new physique. The plates in his chest were raised like a suit of armor, his waist was taut and slim, his biceps danced like baseballs when he curled them.
“FranCIS! FranCIS Anthony MozzarELLI!”
Mary Mozzarelli called him to the kitchen table every morning for a Strongman’s breakfast of a slab of crisped bacon and a half dozen fried eggs.
They sat at the table together with crowns of garlic around their heads (to honor the dead).
“You’re so good to me, Ma,” Francis always said.
“Who’s my baby?” Mary always responded.
“I am.”
“Forever and always?”
“Always and forever!”
The old cephalopod loved to clean her son’s cage. She blew away the sand and debris with her siphon, searching the floor for dirty underwear and socks (and knitted jocks). She squeezed through small spaces, trailing her long, pliant arms behind her as she dusted and stripped and refreshed his mattress. At night, she eased his bedroom door open and floated in to watch her gorgeous son sleep.
“Mamma, what are you doing …?” Francis whispered as he tumbled through bundles of mixed-up dreams.
A little angel flying.
Fucking the daylights out of an old priest.
Pounding the virginity out of neighborhood girls.
Frenching and fucking Terelli Lombardi.
Hearts expanding.
Muscles growing.
Helping his mamma get rid of his papa’s dead body after she killed the old man.
“Careful. Don’t wake him,” Mary had whispered as they dragged the deadweight down the back porch steps and into the grape arbor.
“What happened to Papa?”
“He’s dreamin’ sweet dreams,” Mary said as she dug her husband’s grave.
“But he’s bleeding! He’s not breathing!”
“That ain’t blood! It’s tomato gravy!”
The next day a crow the size of a small rooster landed on the fresh grave and sat there for three weeks without moving a feather.
“Shoo, Bisso Galeto!”
It spooked the hell out of Mary the way it just laughed at her. So she shot it.
“FranCIS! FranCIS AnthONY MozzarELLI! Come help your mamma pick grapes!”
“FranCIS! FranCIS AnthONY MozzarELLI! Where the hell were you all day yesterday?”
Over time, Francis had trouble keeping his mamma, that slippery old octopus, from wrapping her eight arms around him. He felt like she was trying to squeeze him to death. Polpo femmina. Eyes never missing a trick. Toes the color of the ocean. Blood copper-rich. Three hearts beating. One monstrous brain. Always obsessed. Always calculating. Always suffocating.
“Who’s your best girl?”
“Gypsy Rose Lee!”
“Wrong answer!”
“You are?”
“Bingo! And don’t you ever fuckin’ forget it!”
“Never ever.”
“Your mamma is stone-cold crazy,” Terelli used to like to say. Francis missed his little friend. He missed laughing and feeling gay.
“FranCIS! FranCIS AnthONY MozzarELLI!” his mamma called after crisping his bacon and frying his eggs.
Francis knew he had to get away.
FORTES FORTUNA IUVAT
Fortune favors the brave!
At seventeen, he diligently began to plan his escape.
He quit school and got a job at the Charms Candy Factory in shipping and deliveries.
He squirreled his hard-earned cash and thought about nothing but leaving.
He thought about it every second of every day.
While he ate his old lady’s greasy meals, while he pumped iron, while he chased neighborhood skirts and delivered his Charms. Even while he masturbated.
Late one evening, while he was pounding his cannoli in front of his bedroom mirror, he didn’t hear the door to his room creak open. How long had she been standing there? Watching.
“Ma! Jesus Christ!”
“What the hell are you doin’?”
“It itches.”
“Well, stop touchin’ it!”
Once a year, a Midwestern carnival trained into town. Francis loved to watch the strongest strongmen in the world, masks over their eyes, lift giant iron balloons into the twinkling sky.
The bravest of the brave!
They were real heroes!
“I want to be just like them!”
FORTES FORTUNA IUVAT
His fortune unfurled in front of him.
The day he turned eighteen, he was packed and ready to leave, but then he met and fucked the best girl in the world, the love of his life, that bombastic and bodacious girl from the Robertson Scale factory.
The day they fucked was the first time he really made love to another human being. The sky cracked open, his world turned upside down, and his heart crooned. It made him want to hold her in his strong arms and fly them all the way to the moon, until the day she told him she never wanted to see him again.
When Francis’s crazy mamma got wind of what was happening, when she got a visit from the man-eating puttana and smelled the whore’s ripening baby, she set fire to the fucking house and dragged her brokenhearted son away.
“Mamma will take care of her baby. Mamma will take care of everything.”
“Bella!” Francis cried in the bed his mamma tucked him into after she rescued him from Coney Island. She was so happy to feed him again, to nurse him back to health and happiness, to have him home with her where he belonged.
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, ooh,
Who will I give this baby to?
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, eee,
I will keep this baby for me …
In his stupor of pain and grief Francis heard Bella singing,
All of Me!
He felt her tender kisses.
“Take me! Take all of me!” he heard her holler in ecstasy.
He tasted her meatballs. He licked her tomato gravy.
“Who’s my baby?” his mamma whispered as she wrapped her tentacles around him and squeezed.
FORTES FORTUNA IUVAT
Fortune favors the brave!
“BELLADONNA MARIE, COME HOME TO ME!” Francis screamed.