got to know each other more the rest of the week and listened to some other albums. The punk and glam rock was growing on me. After that week, Jeff introduced me to his brother Andy. He was cool and calm too. I instantly clicked with him and began hanging with him too.
$$$
As I grew more popular, my grades began to slip. My attention span struggled. It was as if I couldn’t handle having friends. But I had to change. I had to be crazy. There would always be a big one and a smart one and a dirtbag one, but there needed to be a crazy one with guts. My theatrical reciting of wrestling promos and lines from Scarface put me on the map.
“Oh, he’s so dramatic,” the hall monitors would say.
I took what I saw in movies, music, and professional wrestling and regurgitated it to be funny. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it got me into trouble. But it always got me attention.
The world was changing for Steven and me, and our group was expanding. The Kennedy’s also lived on Venice on the block right between us. We were filling in representation all the way down the street. Nothing could stop us.
8
WE PULLED UP into the long circular driveway. The lawn, where a full sized tennis court once stood in the middle, was now bright green sod. A goldfish pond was on the far side of the property and large hedges shielded the house from the street and from the neighbors on both sides. We parked in front of the giant white house, what seemed to us like a mansion— two floors, five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a sun room, a family room, an office, and a giant living room with a grand piano and a bay window overlooking the Great South Bay. In the summer their sailboat and speedboat were right outside in the canal on their personal docks. Two expensive cars were parked in the driveway out front. We walked into a kitchen and dining room overflowing with food and drink. Abundance to the brim.
The family was small, but full and loud— four great aunts, three great uncles, a few cousins, second cousins, and third cousins. The aunts were the loudest, especially when they drank. The men were quiet and reserved.
Christmas was grand like a Roman festival. The giant tree stood in the living room next to the piano. Upon arriving, all the kids would run right to the mound of gifts to seek out packages with their name on it. There was tons of food too. All my great aunts, and my grandmother, were doing quite well at this point. Aunt Judy was doing the best. By this point, she had four homes. Judy would get out of her Jaguar and enter the house with a long fur coat, a dead animal on her head too, and big diamond rings and necklaces. All the ladies had jewelry. This was show time. The experience of being around all their flashy possessions gave me perspective. I also usually got twenty dollar bills, which wasn’t a lot coming from people who flaunted their goods, but I guess I was lucky to get anything at all. My mother had years where she had to borrow money just to get a tree, and yet we were in the same room with millionaires.
Our family dynamic forced people who otherwise wouldn’t associate with one another to be in the same room on holidays. This was good and bad. Good for them to see a lower class person as a fellow human being and family member, past the surface problems. Good because I got to see how other people lived and enjoyed the fruits of life, and also because I learned that money doesn’t make anyone fulfilled. Bad because people thrown into a mix just don’t relate, and no matter what, you can’t get them to understand why your problems exist especially if you don’t understand the origins yourself.
My younger cousin Courtney enjoyed piano and violin lessons and weekends on her boat. She lived with her grandmother Judy in a Bridgehampton mansion. Here I was down and out and this girl had the nerve to come crying to me at a family get together about how hard life was.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“I want to be a fashion designer.”
“So? Be one.”
“How? I might have to go to Miami or Beverly Hills.”
“I’m sure there are designers in the Hamptons.”
“Did I tell you about my dad’s newest wife?”
Sure, Courtney’s biological mother was a resident at the state sanitarium, and her father was a slouch who barely had a job his entire life as he waited to cash in on his mother’s fortune, but Judy gave Courtney the world. I guess making the best of it is too easy.
“Listen, I don’t have a pot to piss in. So I don’t know what to tell you.”
And she walked away.
$$$
The family didn’t like Don early on. To fit in with in-laws is always a difficult task— especially if they are well off. There was a dichotomy between my poor mother and her mother and this had only increased through the years. My grandmother and her third husband Andre had hit the jackpot with his plumbing pipe invention and they shot up in status with vacations, cars, and summer homes. This success must have egged on her sons-in-law and provoked the competition. Don had his detailing and had a good thing going, compared to my uncle Russell who sank business after business. My mother’s half sister Annie and her husband Russell were so bent on being successful business owners that they just about wrecked their lives over it with debt. From baked desserts to a karaoke studio, they finally settled on dry cleaning.
What were they all really trying to clean up though? What did Andre bring out in these fellows? Or was it simply that his two stepdaughters had selected men who aspired to be something like Andre? Who could blame them? Both Don and Russell had suddenly given up stable nine-to-five jobs for a life that was independent, but at least Andre was the real deal— the real successful businessman— and he had worked hard for it from the ground up. My stepfather and uncle both began to superficially flaunt money they didn’t have and the debts mounted. Were they actually competing with Andre? Did Don really think a collector’s car and a few watches were going to match up to a million dollar house on the water? His finances were so bad one year that he picked off all my birthday cards in the mail from my aunts one year, signed the twenty-five dollar checks and deposited them. We only found out when Aunt Judy called to see why we hadn’t thanked her. And did my uncle Russell really think going out to dinner several times a week to some cheap chain restaurant would match up to the fine dining my grandmother experienced? It was all probably just to make them feel better about themselves.
Don was goofy at times, but he stayed polite and tried to be social. I could tell my aunts and uncles wanted nothing to do with him. When Don would go off about this or that, some would get up and walk away. He talked too much for them. Judy would roll her eyes at him whenever he would start in. This was a tough crowd, especially if they thought he wasn’t being good enough to their own, my mother.
After five or so hours, we said our goodbyes and got into my mother’s Dodge to drive home. On the way, Don decided to pull off the main road and head down a side street toward the water. This was another well-to-do town miles away from my grandmother and only a couple of towns away from where we lived. Long Island was very much like my family Christmas party— A socioeconomic soup. You’d drive through one run down, scary town with bums and boozed up beggars on the street and boom— you’re suddenly in a ritzy village decorated with cheerful lights with Mercedes and BMWs lined up along the cobblestone curb.
Don did a u-turn and parked along the side of the street. He rolled his window down and stuck his hand out to point across the street.
“What are we doing?” my mother asked.
“Look,
