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Boston Outsider / Humor
Buddy returned to the apartment a couple of hours later, looking rather ashen.
“Jesus, that guy Paulie is a piece of work,” he said as he sat across from me. “Where the fuck did you meet him?”
“We used to work together at Blue Cross-Blue Shield,” I answered. “He got fired for calling customers ‘Poopsie” over the phone.”
“He had me make a bunch of stops on the way to his house, Stop and Shop, CVS, a couple of other places. He said he had a phobia about going into stores alone, so there I was going in with him. And I must have loaned him about fifty bucks,” Buddy shook his head.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever run errands with a guy dressed like a butterfly before?” I laughed. “I’ll pay you back the fifty, because believe me, Paulie never will.”
“You think this is funny? He said he had a line of credit at a club near Kenmore Square, and I let him drag me in there with him,” Danny said, coughing. “I was being polite because he’s a friend of yours. It was Alternative Lifestyle Night at the place, and we only left because Paulie was embarrassed about wearing the same outfit as another guy.” I really started giggling now, holding my gut and bending over.
“And when we got to his flophouse,” Buddy continued, “he didn’t have a key, and his landlord was nowhere to be found. So I climbed the fire escape and broke into Madame Butterfly’s room, because again he had a phobia, a fear of heights.”
“He has a fear of everything except driving other people up the wall,” I explained.
“And those other people who were here today,” Buddy said. “They all seem like cooked birds, too.”
“Well,” I replied, scratching my chin, “Sven is okay if you don’t piss him off, but that's a bullshit story about his so-called dueling scar. He really got cut up by a whore in Hamburg. Now, Doris, she’s your basic career panhandler, which may be morally repugnant but which doesn’t meet the clinical definition of insanity. And Daniel grew up Catholic but went to public school, and I think he actually wanted to have his ears boxed by nuns like a lot of the other kids he knew. So now he’s compensating by literally being more Catholic than the Pope.”
“I think I mentioned something about being roomies when we were drinking last night,” Buddy said. “But maybe living with you on a regular basis would be a little too -what’s the word?- ‘bohemian.’”
“Sure, I understand, Buddy,” I said, doing my best to act disappointed.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I talked to Paulie for a couple of minutes and returned to my stool. Duke, a WWII veteran, ex-boxer, and former bookmaker, was regaling Buddy with an anecdote.
“My division was sent to the Philippines after the Germans surrendered,” Duke said. “There were nationalist guerillas in the hills, so we got combat pay, but all we ever did was eat bananas and go bowling. One guy I knew made a pet of a monkey, and he cried his eyes out when he couldn’t bring the thing back to the States with him. I heard he ended up marrying a woman who looked like a chimp.”
Buddy squirted some beer out of a nostril as he laughed at this. Duke insisted on giving us one last round on the house, and after drinking it we took our leave. As we were walking back to my apartment, I asked Buddy what he thought of Whitman’s.
“I know the place is kind of a halfway house for unattached male nuts,” Buddy answered. “But it’s a panic!”
The next day, Sunday, at a little after 4:00 p.m., Buddy and I were watching a football game when my doorbell rang. I pushed the intercom button and asked who was at the door.
“Let me in, you philistine,” a familiar voice announced.
“Come on up,” I said, pushing the door release. “It’s my friend Paulie,” I said to Buddy. “He drops in once in a while.”
“That’s cool,” Buddy shrugged.
I met Paulie Gomes at the door of my third floor walk-up. He was accompanied by Sven, a tall man with a shaved head and an ugly scar on his left cheek; Daniel, a middle-aged guy in a rumpled suit; and Doris, a mature woman who dressed in ragged clothing and carried four shopping bags filled with books, papers and other bags. Sven and Daniel were fellow insomniacs I knew from an all-night diner. Doris was a familiar figure who had a regular begging station in front of the local Baskin Robbins.
“I bumped into some friends!” Paulie smiled. He was a tiny fellow, about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and on this occasion he was wearing a butterfly costume, complete with antennae, wings, black tights, and little slippers.
“Is that your Sunday best you’re wearing?” I asked.
“I’m doing a children’s play at a little venue in Inman Square,” Paulie said. “I want to stay in character as long as possible. And since lepidopterans don't carry luggage, I left my street clothes at the theater after today's matinee. I'll pick them up on Tuesday."
“Oh, you’re a character all right,” I replied.
I asked everyone in and introduced them to Buddy, who didn’t seem overly fazed by Paulie’s manner of dress. Paulie and Sven sat on the futon-couch, Daniel and Doris sat on the loveseat facing them, and Buddy and I sat on metal folding chairs on either side of my stereo, along a wall that was perpendicular to the other furniture. Paulie had assembled quite a crew. Sven was a reputed deserter from the French Foreign Legion. Daniel belonged to a quasi-Catholic sect whose members believed that the true pope was a twenty-year-old short order cook who lived with his mother in a dilapidated house near the Forest Hills MBTA station. Doris the bag lady was actually quite well off, but sometimes I gave her a buck in the hopes that she’d leave me something in her will.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
For five years during the 1980s, when the People’s Republic of Cambridge still clung to a vestige of socialism, I lived in a rent-controlled, 1.5 room studio apartment just east of Harvard Square. It was cheap, and I didn’t own much of anything, so it wasn’t a bad arrangement. One Saturday night, as I sat in my tiny abode watching “Twilight Zone” on a New Hampshire UHF station, I got a call from my friend Buddy Feeney, who lived in Revere.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Buddy said. “I've got a big favor to ask. Would you mind if I stayed at your place for a while?”
“Shit, Buddy,” I answered. “You’ve seen how small this place is. Are you having problems at home again?”
“’Problems’ isn’t the word,” he replied. “If I stay here much longer, you’re going to be reading something awful about me in the Herald.”
“All right,” I said. “Just for a week or so. And make sure that somebody knows where you are.”
Buddy arrived the next night, toting a small suitcase. I gave him my visitor parking card so that his car wouldn’t get towed, and he settled in. After using the bathroom, he came back in the main room with a big smile on his face.
“I just took a piss with the bathroom door open,” he said gleefully. “I haven’t done that in eight years!”
“I’ve been pissing with the bathroom door open for quite a while now,” I said from my perch on a folded futon . “And it’s no big deal. Maybe I’m just jaded.”
“Listen,” Buddy said as he sat on a moth-eaten loveseat. “I know you think I’m a jerk for being here instead of with my wife and kids. You’ve seen Dragoslava lately. She’s still a hot little number after having three children, but life with her has turned into one, big pain in the ass. She and her relatives are the only Zaglavakians this side of Chicago, so my in-laws use my house as their own personal ethnic club. They come and go as they please, playing accordions and drinking plum brandy. And when they run out of plum brandy, they help themselves to my beer.”
“Call up ‘National Geographic,’” I laughed. “They can go to your house and film a special.”
“It’s no joke,” Buddy said, lighting a Marlboro. “You know what it’s like at Easter? A priest with a beard three feet long comes over and stinks up the place with incense. It’s supposed to be an exorcism. The whole tribe goes in the back yard and roasts a pig, and at the end of the night they dance around dressed like garden gnomes while Dragoslava’s grandmother lights firecrackers.”
“Don’t you remember?” I asked. “I was at one of those parties. The roast pig was delicious.”
“The pig tastes wonderful until you find out how much you’re being porked,” he replied, not cracking a smile.
I decided not to give any lectures about the sanctity of the marriage bond. The next six days passed smoothly. Buddy worked the night shift at UPS, and I worked days at a health insurance company, and we barely saw one another. Saturday evening rolled around, and I wondered when I should broach the subject of Buddy’s checkout time. At about six o’clock, I asked him if he wanted to go to the Square for a couple of beers.
“All right,” he said, enthusiastically. “Brewskies in freaky Cambridge!”
I brought Buddy to Whitman’s, a little watering hole that I often visited on J.F.K. Street. On the way there, as we were walking along Mass. Ave., a man in an Uncle Sam costume rode by on a unicycle.
“What’s with that character?” Buddy asked. “July Fourth was three months ago, and Halloween isn’t for another three weeks.”
“That guy always dresses like that,” I said calmly.
“You know, Jimmy,” Buddy answered. “You belong in this neighborhood.”
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Boston Outsider / Humor
It was late afternoon on the last Monday of August, eight days before the start of ninth grade. Weasel Mullins and I were pitching quarters against the wall of our junior high school when Nickie Tsakos came by.
“Where you been?” Weasel asked.
“Greek School,” Nickie moaned.
“What’s that, something to do with bum-blasting?” Weasel smirked.
“Ha, ha, Asshole,” Nickie said. “I go to my church and study ancient Greek. It’ll come in handy if I ever go back in a time machine and want to talk to Socrates. I’ll be doing it every weekday, once regular school starts.”
“I don’t have to do any Irish shit after school,” Weasel replied. “But if I were a girl I’d be stuck taking step-dancing lessons.”
“You’d look cute kicking up your heels in a green dress,” Nickie laughed. “You got the red hair and all.”
“You think Irish dancing is real funny?” asked Weasel, narrowing his blue eyes. “You know what ‘Greek dancing’ is slang for, don’t you?”
“Fuck you,” answered Nickie.
“Exactly,” cackled Weasel.
“What about you?” Nickie asked me. “You got any Italian duties?"
“On Wednesdays, you know, Prince Spaghetti Day, if my mother is busy watching ‘Dialing For Dollars,’ I have to stir the red gravy so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.”
“A Meatball who eats meatballs,” Weasel said. “It’s fucking cannibalism!”
“Well, what does your family eat on Wednesdays, Weasel?” I asked. “Plain boiled cabbage?”
“No, you ignorant Wop, we eat fried peat moss on Wednesdays,” Weasel snapped.
The three of us pitched quarters for about another hour when Manny Oliveira joined us. Manny was an immigrant from Portugal, a good-natured kid, but Weasel love to ride him.
“How’s it going, you foreign fuck?” Weasel greeted Manny.
“Is that nice, calling me a ‘foreign fuck’?” Manny asked. “At least make up something original.”
“All right, your new name is 'Linguicia Breath,'” Weasel answered.
“I’ve heard worse,” Manny smiled. “Now let me in this game.”
Manny kicked our asses, winning almost every round. About half the time he actually tossed “leaners.” Weasel was amazed at Manny’s advanced state of assimilation.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I drive to Somerville today for my father’s memorial Mass, and who do I see in the church parking lot afterwards but Louie Malatesta, the owner of the Bonbon Salon, where I once worked. (“Straight as a pin, but ugly as sin,” is what we used to say about him.) He introduces me to his new wife, a cute little Filipino woman. I’ve heard that she brings him to Mass every Sunday and that she made him throw out his Bo Derek movie collection and his bong. She’s pregnant, and they seem happy.
After I drive Ma home to her condo, I go to the old neighborhood and take a look around. Our old house is still painted reddish brown, but the lawn Madonna is gone, and there’s a rainbow flag on the porch. I imagine that there’s a nice lesbian couple living there, and that in between softball games they have long heartfelt talks about being oppressed by the Patriarchy. Patriarchy. . . I remember that word from the Women’s Studies course I took as an elective at U.Mass. when I was going there nights for my business degree. It’s just a fancy way of saying that men can be jerks, but with four older brothers I didn’t need Women’s Studies to gain that insight.
Our old street is populated by professionals and Tufts professors now. I see a few helmeted children riding bikes around, and I laugh thinking that a kid who used a crash helmet back in my day would have been teased about it for the rest of his life. The four or five blocks where my brothers and I played were Kid Heaven. There were kids everywhere, running around and raising hell, kids and their mutt dogs.
Many of the canines were siblings to one another. There was a low-rent dog breeder on the other side of our block. He owned a male German shepherd and a female collie, both unfixed, and every time they had a litter, he’d sell the puppies for eight dollars each. The local children were all influenced by television, and so a female dog with collie features might get the name Lassie. Because “Hogan’s Heroes” was a popular series, dogs with dominant shepherd traits were often dubbed Klink, Schultz, Burkhhalter or Hochstetter, although a female could be Helga or Hilda. I suppose that a male poodle would have been called LeBeau after the French P.O.W. on the show, but this is a moot point, since the poodle breed was unknown in the neighborhood. A kid with a poodle would have been as big an outcast as a kid in a bicycle helmet.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
Now that my Friday shift at the Bonbon Salon is over, I’m sitting at one of the mirrors working on my own coif, using a ton of hair spray to get it nice and high, and in my head I’m saying, “Screw you” to all the hippies who bitch about the ozone layer, because I don’t take crap from people who piss me off. The streets here in Somerville are only semi-plowed after yesterday’s storm, and after I leave the shop and drive to my neighborhood, I get a nasty surprise. My parking space across from Mrs. Flaherty’s house, the space I shoveled myself and marked with two trash barrels, is occupied by a big black Oldsmobile, and I have to park three blocks from home instead of three doors away. Somebody is going to pay.
When I open the door at home, my big Italian nose picks up the scent of pasta fazool, the macaroni and bean soup that my mother makes on Fridays during Lent. It’s supposed to be meatless, but Ma starts it by sautéing salt pork and herbs in olive oil. She says that a little meat is okay if it’s, “just for flavor.” Yeah, right, I’d like to see the catechism where she found that loophole. When I go in the kitchen, I see that there are two soup pots on the stove, and I figure that Ma has invited her cousin Chooch, who has an appetite like a Clydesdale with the munchies, over for dinner.
“How was work today, Tina?” Ma asks when she sees me.
“Work was okay, Ma, but somebody stole my parking space,” I tell her, and she gives me a little sermon about loving your enemies. Then she shuts off the soup and heads to the cellar to do laundry.
Well, I decide to give my latest enemy some tough love. I go to the fridge, grab a carton of eggs, and bring them outside to where that stupid Olds is parked. Then I smash the whole dozen on the bastard’s windshield, hoping that the mess will freeze. I retrieve the trash barrels from the sidewalk, remembering to put the egg carton in one of them. I wouldn’t want to litter.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I wondered how I could rid myself of this mother lode of filth, and I immediately thought of my uncle Sal, who dealt in dubious merchandise. After locking up Richie’s treasure vault, I called Sal and made an appointment to see him on the following Saturday night.
When Saturday afternoon came, I was in Braintree at the Dom DiMaggio Lodge, the local headquarters of the International Society of Garibaldians. The Cattivo family was descended from a long line of anticlerical agitators, and so a memorial service at the lodge would be the closest thing to a funeral Mass that Richie would have. In attendance were a handful of lodge members, about twenty people from the Bunker, Richie’s sister Marie, and his daughter Lucretia. Richie’s ex-wife was conspicuously absent, which cemented her image as an evil shrew in the minds of Richie’s sales colleagues.
At the front of the room was a table bearing Richie’s college graduation picture, along with an urn containing his ashes. As I took the lectern to speak, I recalled something Richie once told me, “If you’re going to lie, make sure that the lie contains a grain of truth.”
Thinking of Richie’s fondness for strippers, I told my audience that the departed appreciated the performing arts. Awed at how Richie had managed to keep his perversion under the radar while amassing all those magazines, I said that he was a quiet man who loved to read. And in light of Richie’s admission that he had spent countless thousands of dollars on lap dances, I lobbed the biggest bullshit grenade of my life.
“We all know that he was a great salesman,” I said solemnly, looking out over the small crowd. “And I believe this was because Richie, in this cold, impersonal world, truly knew how to develop a sense of closeness with people.”
In the front row of mourners, a buxom redhead named Eileen, who had been the favorite object of Richie’s covert ogling, began to sob loudly. I almost started bawling myself.
After the service was over, Marie thanked me for speaking and asked if I had had a chance to inspect Richie’s storage locker.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s full of books.”
“Oh, yes, like you said, he loved to read,” she replied, smiling sweetly. “Are you going to keep them?”
“I’m going to donate them to a library,” I answered, too timid to call her bluff, if it was a bluff. “I’ll have that key for you next week.”
“The library. Richie would have wanted it that way,” she beamed.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I took a deep breath and did my best to calm down. Zack gave me the name of the hospital where Richie had been taken. I said goodbye to Zack, called the hospital, and spoke to a friend who worked in Admitting. She confirmed that a Richard G. Cattivo had been dead on arrival earlier in the evening, and I felt like crap thinking that my last conversation with the poor sad bastard had consisted of wisecracks.
A couple of days later, Richie’s next of kin, his sister Marie, came to the Bunker to collect a few items that were in his desk. Ted, our shift manager, led her over to my work station and introduced us. She was a pretty woman of about fifty, with pleasant blue eyes. Ted went back to his office and let us have a few words alone.
“According to the autopsy, Richie must have died of a massive heart attack that morning,” Marie said. “That thing with the snake was post mortem. Mildred is off the hook.” She smiled wryly, sniffing back tears. It looked as if there was still a joker left in the Cattivo family.
“He talked about you a lot,” she continued. “I found a metal box full of documents at his apartment, and there was a note saying that he wanted you to have something of his if anything ever happened to him.” She reached into her purse and took out a key attached to a plastic tag with the name and address of a storage facility on it. On the key itself was a number that I assumed was the number of a locker. She handed me the key, and then she asked if I would speak at a memorial service that was to be held for Richie the following Saturday.
“Sure, I’ll say a few words” I answered, thinking that Richie had probably alienated all his old friends during his race to oblivion. “And I’ll give this locker key back to you after I see what he left me.”
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I soon realized that I was the only person at work who knew the truth about Richie. The official story in the “bunker,” which is what we called the windowless basement room in which we toiled, was that he had lost a lucrative job because of corporate downsizing and that he had left his wife because of infidelity, her infidelity. In one version of the soap opera, Mrs. Cattivo had dallied with the Roto Rooter man. Another rumor was that she had gotten involved with a group of high school athletes and had done something kinky with a lacrosse stick. Richie claimed that he wasn’t behind all the gossip, but conversely, he seemed to do nothing to dispel any negative notions about his ex.
He kept a low profile at work, never making overtures to female coworkers. (“I don’t shit where I eat,” is the way he put it.) Occasionally, when a well-endowed woman walked by, Richie would look at me and cup his own hands in front of his chest, Guy Sign Language for “nice rack,” but he always made sure that nobody was looking. And there were times when he would express remorse for ruining his marriage, and I would feel as if he was seeking some sort of absolution. But over the months, as his sales figures and commissions steadily rose, I could sense that he was growing restless.
“I’ve been looking to get my own place,” he said to me one day in the elevator after work. “Living with roomies is cramping my style. You live alone, right? I tell you what,” he continued, arching his eyebrows. “Let’s go to your place and call an escort service. We can get a couple of girls and have a little orgy. I’ve been doing pretty good at work, so it’s my treat”
“Richie,” I sighed. “My apartment is two lousy rooms. And the lease says that I can’t have pets or whores.”
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Boston Outsider / Humor
It was twelve years ago, and I was working another silly job in a long line of silly jobs, doing inside sales for minimum wage plus commission, selling subscriptions to specialized pet magazines. It was cold calling, and I’m sure one can imagine how much fun it was to phone a hundred strangers a day and say, “Excuse me, do you or anyone else in your household own a mongoose?” or other pitches that sounded a lot like juvenile telephone gags.
Richie Cattivo worked there, too. He was a paunchy, balding guy with glasses and a moustache, who seemed to be a middle-aged Everyman. The word was that he was divorced and was being eaten alive by child support payments, and he really hustled for sales. He was such a good salesman that the manager let him handle all the fastest-moving products we were peddling: Iguana Monthly, Ferret Lovers’ Gazette, Gerbil World, etc. I, meanwhile, had low figures and was stuck pushing losers such as the Pygmy Goat Newsletter. Maaaaa. . . .
Richie was a hot shit. One night after we finished our shift, about five months after I met him, he had me cracking up as he told me all about his domestic situation.
“I’m rooming with a guy and a girl about twenty years old,” he told me. “They keep a boa constrictor and feed it live rats. And don’t bother calling them, because they already subscribe to Reptile Health. They screw at all hours and make noises from ‘Wild Kingdom,’ which makes me even more lonely. I’ve been eating in bars most nights so that I can get home after they’re tired out, and to save money I’ve been scarfing down a lot of free appetizers. I’ve had so many fried mozzarella sticks the last month, my ass is made of cheese,” he frowned.
“I have an idea, Richie,” I said. “Chinatown is on my way home, and I know a good place where we can get rice plates or noodles pretty cheap. Take a ride with me, and I’ll pop for dinner. You need to eat some vegetables, or you’ll be missing work for constipation.” He laughed and accepted my offer.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
When I was in the fourth grade, there was a frequently televised public service announcement for the Immigration & Naturalization Service that ended with the words, “All aliens must report before January 1st.” After seeing the announcement several times, I decided to stake out the government building that housed the local I.N.S. office.
I loitered outside the place every weekday after school to spy on the facility’s visitors. I saw women dressed entirely in black, men with drooping moustaches, whole families in big fur hats, and old Chinese fellows with pigtails and long beards. But I didn’t witness one creature with antennae or tentacles, or any nine-foot guys with huge crania, or even a mutant chimp like the one on “Lost in Space.” What was going on? After a month or so, my father finally straightened me out.
“An ‘alien’ is just a foreign person,” my Dad said. “Like your grandmother upstairs.”
My maternal grandmother in the second floor apartment of our house was indeed foreign. She used to douse herself with vinegar before backyard cookouts to repel mosquitoes. When a stray feline encroached upon our front porch, my grandmother showed a superhuman talent for cat-flinging. She said that she could interpret dreams. And she often spoke a strange language with my mother.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I came to St. Rocco’s in 1958, when the parish needed another priest who spoke the Neapolitan dialect. Father Scaramucci, the original pastor since 1915, was still here then. The man was a legend. For the first two years after his arrival in the United States, while the church was being constructed, he held Mass for other Italian immigrants in the back room of a salumeria -a delicatessen- and so the local Irish joked by calling him, “Padre Bologna.”
But he became an important man in the community, and now a street, a hospital wing, and a nursing home are named after him. Many who have prayed at his grave claim to have been cured of warts and moles. I lived with Father Scaramucci for ten years in the rectory, and I knew him, “warts and all,” as the saying goes. He sometimes skipped reading his Vespers to watch, “I Love Lucy.” He was addicted to spicy food, often eating a whole jar of pepperoncini at a time. When he would get agita from such imprudence, he would ask for Brioschi, a bicarbonate of soda imported from Italy. He said that Alka Seltzer didn’t help, and if we were out of Brioschi , he would send me to the North End to get the stuff. And he cheated at bocce! If he is ever a candidate for sainthood, I suppose I will have to reveal all this to the Devil’s Advocate.
After Father Scaramucci went to his reward, I became pastor, during the tumultuous aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. Not all of the Council’s reforms were well received. Mrs. Cantalupo, whose husband “Boom-Boom” was a well-to-do cement contractor, despised the Folk Mass we instituted, and she threatened to have the parish guitarist assassinated. She relented in her criticism after I appointed her to be the cook of the monthly Communion Breakfast. She was a difficult woman, but she made a delicious pepper-and-onion frittata.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
Diary, February 17, 1970:
Our first class of the day is gym, which is always a barrel of laughs. We’re the boys of section 8-A, supposedly the smartest class in eighth grade, but the gym instructor hates our guts. He has us twice a week, and sometimes he gets a kick out of pitting us against one of the juvenile delinquent sections in a game of “kamikaze basketball.” He’s a swarthy guy of about five-feet zero, and he was a high school hoop star for the city in the late 40s. At that height, he didn’t have much of an inside game, and so he was an outside shooter with the nickname, “Sal the Set Shot.”
Today Sal outdoes himself. After we suit up, he tells us to sit in the bleachers. Then he goes out to mid-court and sings several choruses of, “Is That All There Is?” a popular and depressing song about the pointlessness of existence. I don’t know if Sal is just having more fun with us, if he’s had an eye-opener of cheap whiskey for breakfast, or if he dresses up like Peggy Lee in his spare time, but the whole thing is bizarre. The show goes on for so long that we don’t even get any exercise.
Our second period English teacher is a substitute, a young, longhaired guy. At first the rumor about him was that he was a crazed Viet Nam vet, as in, “That guy had a nut blown off over there. Don’t get him mad!” But then it turned out that he was just another hippie out of U.Mass., and now all the burnouts ask him if he can get them any weed.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I am an American of Italian ancestry, and I know that many of my co-ethnics were not thrilled with the way our tribe was portrayed on “The Sopranos.” But there were times when the show raised important questions, such as in the episode in which Paulie the capo and Silvio the consigliere argue as to whether the substance poured over pasta should be called “sauce” or “gravy.” It was a scene that hit home.
“Jimmy, you stupid fuck,” a dear friend once enlightened me. “Don’t call it sauce. If it’s got meat in it, it’s gravy”
Yes, meat is important in Italo-American culture. When I was growing up, no Fourth of July cookout at our house was complete without Italian sausages (hot and sweet) to show those burgers and hot dogs who was boss. Our fridge was always stocked with fine cold cuts. Once, when I was caught with a piece of genoa salami on a meatless Friday, I claimed that it was for my grandmother’s cat, and my mother countered by saying that the cat was a Third Order Carmelite, bound by vows to abstain from meat on both Fridays and Wednesdays.
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