Serenity is a Shapeless Port-a-Potty When You're Italian
When the man who thinks he's Tony Soprano ends up being your father
I step out of the Walgreens in my plaid velvet blazer and turtleneck. Plus a belt. I am too primal for belts. I’m like an animal who can’t understand why I have to go through such a process just to take a piss.
This took a lot of effort. This is as far as I will go. I step out of the Walgreens just as that white Chevy Tahoe swerves rapidly left and right and screeches to a stop in between parking spots.
This is not the beginning of a movie. This is just my father showing up to have dinner with my sister and I–and he will say the reason he parked like such a dick was because he was legitimately being chased and will actually believe it.
He is divorced and both of his kids drive so there’s absolutely no reason why he needed to buy a new car this size other than to feel like he was in Sopranos. You will never meet another man who has fully committed to playing Tony Soprano in real life than my father, although we’ve never spoken about it.
I breathe. Like, heavily. I’ve never properly read up on meditation, so all I know about it is the whole “SERENITY NOW” thing George Costanza’s father did on Seinfeld meaning that’s what I’m doing right now as he almost rear ends a fucking Porche sportscar then gets out like nothing happened with the stupid Romeo Y Julieta not simply Juliet cigar puffing in his mouth and is about to storm in like he has someone he’s already going to yell at–
SERENITY NOW!!!
Then Joan comes from my left, right there on the sidewalk, out of nowhere, and suddenly we’re all the street at once, from different cities, and I forget for a minute cell phones and group chats are a thing and I just think it’s magic–but not the good kind–like the kind a modern-day Twitter witch would cast on you while surrounded by her 70 house plants and stick and poke tattoos.
“Hey little brother,” she says. Her breasts are exploding out of her dress (also plaid). They’re fucking huge. I don’t know how I don’t have any, genetically. Therefore, even when she dresses up it’s still not appropriate. Therefore–
“I win.”
“Huh?”
“I’m dressed better.”
She sighs, way too exhausted-like already. “No you’re not, it’s just that I don’t know where to put my tits.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Dad’s gonna yell at you.”
“No he isn’t–he’s not gonna be able to say anything so he’s just gonna drink.”
“Right. I don’t want to be here.”
“Me neither.” Her eyes are already glassy. They’re always like this. Joan went to acting school for two years in New York City, a few blocks away from where we are now. She really didn’t need to though–she was just one of those people whose emotions were right there at all times.
“Ugh, he’s going in without us,” she moans.
“I can’t be the one to tell him.”
“Dad!” She yells and starts running across the street. I follow her.
He turns around, the monster, so defensive, like he also convinced himself he was being followed. Then he lightens up. The string lights on the awning also reflect off his bald head. “AYYY!” He changes and holds out his arms. Joan runs right into them and I’m pulled. “What the hell are you we–?” He cuts himself off when he realizes Joan didn’t stuff her bra or anything. Then he puts his arms around us as we walk in.
“Where’s Melissa?” asks Joan. He’s on his third wife.
He tuts, “She’s fucking useless. She’ll be here in a half hour.”
“Why did we have to come here?” I ask.
Dad gives me a terrifying look. “Is that how the fuck you talk to your fa–?”
“No, I mean this restaurant specifically. Jesus Christ. Why is it always this restaurant? There’s other Italian restaurants closer to home–”
He lets go to walk ahead of me and face me head on, pointing a finger right in my face. “There is no food better than Sal’s. You understand? There is no fucking way.”
“Every Italian restaurant is named Sal’s and you can’t even tell them apart.”
I feel his breath on my face. “You fucking take that back.”
“Hi, how many?” The hostess says.
Dad whips around at her and takes his leftover anger out on her instead. “Reservation,” he taps on the desk aggressively. “We have a fuckin’ reservation. You think we’re just walking in? Just strolling in here? Have a little respect.” He throws his hand back. “Been coming here long than you been alive…”
I’ve been here many times. It’s fancy, yeah, but it’s not that big of a deal. Food, no matter how fancy, is still food, and never that big of a deal. I eat for sustenance–but I can never say that to him.
So, we’ve been here enough times that the staff knows who he is and probably has warning signs in the kitchen with his photo on it, but not long enough for Dad to properly befriend them. It’s in the awkward stages and it’ll never go beyond that.
He still acts like it isn’t though, as he walks right into the kitchen. “AYY, Vinny!” He grabs the head chef and wrestles him into a headlock while tussling his hair. Joan and I watch through the window as Vinny wrestles himself back out of my dad’s arms. You could tell he wants to kill him but he forces a smile.
“How’s it going, uh–you got a table right? Where’s that table at?” He asks, without realizing my dad doesn’t pick up on signs.
At the table, I sit in front of a tablecloth, folded napkins, and candles. I’m really hoping things have ebbed down, at least for now, but then he pulls out a cigar and lights it. Julieta. Fucking Julieta.
“Got a girlfriend yet?” He side-eyes me.
“No.”
“...Are you sure you’re not gay?”
“Yeah.” I am gay actually. I just deny it for some reason so I can keep him in this limbo about it. He knows I’m lying but he doesn’t say it either. It’s just a recurring joke at this point that I don’t even think is funny.
“With that suit jacket? AHA!” He elbows Joan, whose water spills onto her arm. “A straight guy wouldn’t wear it, let alone an Italian.” He throws up his eyebrows, like he thinks it was a great poke.
“Actually I took the 23 and me DNA test and it looks like you’re actually only 34% Italian and the other 66% is French, German–”
He stands up and nearly flings himself across the table at me, for Christ's sake– “I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna fucking hear it, you understand? It’s not true. Get the fuck out of here with that science bullshit.” He sits back down slowly. Joan stares wide-eyed behind her glass.
“Hey Frank!” Melissa comes up behind him and breaks the tension, laying her hand on his shoulder as she sits down. She’s young, and very pretty.
“What the hell?” He almost whispers, taking a piece of her dress in his hand and running it through. “You didn’t get the message?”
“Huh?” She still smiles, trying so hard.
“What the fuck is with the plaid?” I lean over and whisper to Joan.
“We’re all supposed to be wearing plaid. Fucking plaid. You come in here with this solid color shit? In Sal’s? You threw it all off. You threw everything off. Congradufuckinglations.”
“Sir, there’s no smoking allowed in here,” a waitress walking by says, as a nearby baby coughs.
Dad tuts and dabs it out in Melissa’s water. “Christ.”
I’ve always been torn between feeling bad for her or being irritated. I had no idea why she was with him–I didn’t know enough about her fucked up childhood. It was so obvious, the Stockholm syndrome.
His phone starts ringing, and it’s Pavarotti. He never listened to Pavarotti when we grew up, let alone any music. I look at Joan across the table and she looks disheveled, like she’s exhausted.
I find my hands in my lap. I never have my hands in my lap. They’re completely dead. Just feels like I don’t have hands at all.
“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “Yeah. Yeah. Just get it done.” He hangs up.
“Who was that?” asks Melissa.
“Coworker,” he says, a little defeated sounding. He’s just a manager at Toys R Us.
“Dad, you’re supposed to say goodbye before you hang up.” Joan says.
He waves her off. “It’s just business, don’t worry about it.”
She tuts, and sighs.
The waitress puts down breadsticks and I stare into them like they’re the ocean. Big bodies of water make me forget all my problems. You’re tiny and insignificant, or in other words, useless.
Dad reaches in with both hands and grabs several. He eats them all in less than a minute and keeps reaching back in for more. I forgot to mention he’s wearing one ring on every finger, and they’re constantly falling into the breadbasket.
I watch, and I see what happens.
Melissa reaches in for one–one without fingerprints–and gasps. Joan looks up in fright–she’s totally on edge. “Oh my god, Frank! You got this for me?” She holds up a breadstick with a ring around it–the ol’ trick.
“Shit–gimmie that.” He swipes it off the stick and puts it back on his finger, still covered in butter, all ready to fall in the toilet.
Melissa puts the breadstick back. Dad shoves the garlic knots at her. “Here.”
“It’s okay, I’ll save my appetite for the entrée.” She smiles.
He leans in close, into her ear, and it gives me PTSD. “What the fuck did I tell you? Eat the damn thing. What did I tell you?”
I frown. What did he tell her?
“Dad, I want you to know I have a boyfriend.” Joan chimes in. This is her way of helping.
He looks up at her–breadstick now fallen onto the tablecloth. He finishes chewing. “He Italian?”
“No.”
He swallows hard. He starts out slow. “What the fuck is with you two? Do you want the goddamn culture to die out? Those black guys Jo, they don’t fuckin’ stick around.”
“Dad, please,” she whines. “I’ve already told him all about you, he wants to have dinner one day.”
He chews. “Did you tell him I’m from the Bronx?”
I choke on my water but swallow the air rather than risk him hearing.
“Dad,” she sighs, “You’re not from the Bronx, you’re from Yonkers.”
“You tell him I’m from the Bronx.” He points his fork that he wasn’t using at her accusingly. He puts it back down.
“Dad this is stupid.”
“One day, you’ll understand.” He says. Melissa nods in agreeance–as if she has any idea what the fuck he’s talking about.
The food comes, a big bowl of penne alla vodka for him. Some Primavera for me, some Bolognese for Joan, and a bowl of Fagioli for Melissa. I hate that I know these names.
He eats it terribly, like he’s trying so hard to eat it in the least amount of bites as possible. There’s no rush. He works at Toys R Us. I haven’t even touched my food. I’m flashing back to the time when he was driving us through his old neighborhood in NYC, pointing to the buildings we passed, going “I cheated on your mother in that complex!”
When he’s nearly done, he calls the waitress over urgently. “Yeah, this was warm–not hot. I’d like to send it back.”
She frowns, looking down at his plate of almost finished food.
He gestures again. “The center was cold!”
“Dad, the center’s gone.” Joan whines.
“Can’t you see this man is upset with his dinner?” I yell. It makes everyone turn their heads. Even the waitress looks confused, like she thought she knew my character. “He brings his family to a nice restaurant for a fathers day dinner, which he planned himself, he’s worked his ass off all day at a toy store, and all he wants is goddamn plate of alla vodka!” I gesture to the empty plate with both hands. I’m channeling Christopher, when he explodes at nothing. “And he tried to rough it to save you guys some money. He didn’t want to seem rude, but look, he couldn’t do it–he just couldn’t finish–and this man’s an Italian, pure-blooded baby, and he couldn’t finish. So do me a favor, will you, and warm up the fucking pasta?”
The waitress quickly takes up the dish and gets the hell away from us.
A moment later I look through the kitchen window to see Vinny pulling out his hair.
Everyone still stares at me. Joan is slack jawed and looks like she’s ready to cry. Melissa looks at her lap like a fucking weak link, and Dad awkwardly goes for another breadstick, which he starts cutting with a fork and knife as a way to occupy himself.
Finally, and maybe it’s due to the adrenaline, I ask him the question I’ve been dying to ask him all my life:
“Hey Dad, have you ever watched Sopranos?”
He doesn’t look up–he just waves me off with a fork. “No, never. Why–it good?”
“Excuse me,” I stand up, push in my chair, and walk into the bathroom.
I lock myself in a stall, which are all basically single little rooms with just a toilet. A high class port-a-john. I sit down on the toilet with my pants still up. I didn’t even check for piss stains. I pull out the cough syrup from my jacket pocket. I drink as much as I can without cringing. When it’s over, it feels like a great release of stress, that momentary pain, like an ice bath. Serenity now.
I look up, in front of me, at the little shelf with the fake succulent, and I feel like I could just be here forever.