Sketches Of The Commentator

1983 or 1984. I graced, with my ominous presence, a baptism. I can't remember whose baptism. Doesn't matter. He or she or it is probably a sinner by now. Wait. I think we're all born sinners in Catholicism.

More likely, the baptized one has (in addition to being divorced) gone on to denounce Catholicism and become an atheist.

I'm just projecting. I have no way of verifying that since, well, as I pointed out, I don't know who the fuck I'm talking about. Which, at this point, should make some of you antsy waiting in anticipation to know what the point of this post is.

1983. Baptism. Been through all that. We, my family, were sitting at the table watching boredom ooze from our collective eyeballs, when Billy Idol's Rebel Yell began playing. It perked us up. As we sat listening, my father's sister, my aunt, was losing her mind complaining about the music - as she'd done all night.

Incidentally, I learned years after what the rebel yell actually was. It dates back to the American Civil War. Sounds a lot like me waiting for my dinner to be served. Or how I entered work every day.

My aunt was in her later years what they call in the medical profession, nuts. Crazy. All she was missing were the cats. Which brings me to yet another story. When I was in high school a teacher was telling the class about how lonely a recently retired teacher had become living at home alone. A compassionate bum sitting at the back of the class, who had heard enough, blurted out, "just get her a cat." At the time it was funny. I still think it is.

La zia was married to lo zio (my uncle) who was also, though not clinically, insane. On a visit high into the mountains of my father's hometown in Calabria, sat a regal but ragged bunch of Calabrese men speaking in thick Calabrese accents. We sat in silence as we watched them talk about "the superiority of the Calabrese race." It was all so enlightening and disturbing. My uncle was, to put it mildly, an asshole. He treated his family like shit.

It was the treatment of his sick, dying son in particular that forever left a mark on us during our first trip to the motherland. A powerful but gentle soul, Sandro was addicted to drugs and alcohol. He was, as long as I knew him, a drunk. "You're grandmother was a drunk too" as my mother relayed with contempt one day. It ran in the family; though not mine. Although I've been known to slur the touching utterance, "you don't know me" from time to time on nothing but a glass of Campari Soda. Sandro also loved to read. He was a voracious reader from what I was told. While his brother jacked off to a pile of Playboys (and more hard core publications) that touched the ceiling of his room, Sandro would read novels, essays and other substantial forms of literature.

My uncle took us to where he was. "Dove le petit chien?" he said in Fritalian. It was a remarkably evil thing to say to a dying son afflicted with an addiction. When we visited him he was happy to see us. Before him in front of his bed was a pail of pills. We spoke for a bit. The last thing he ever said to us was, "stay in school. An education is the greatest thing anyone could ever achieve. It stays with you forever. In your mind."

A few months later he was dead.

Sandro was my aunt's son. My aunt at the baptism was demanding they play the traditional Calabrese song La tarantella. When the DJ and family members of concern reminded her it had played for one hour straight this fact resonated little with her.

So it was in the middle of the Rebel Yell - yeeeeeoooooowww! - did she pull the plugs on the sound system. Utter, dead silence followed for 20 seconds or so and then the shouts of one mean, angry Italian lady demanding her music. If I had to choose between a racoon defending a recently claimed garbage can, a wombat and a tiny, Calabrese lady, I'm going with the lady. Vicious is not the word.

Don't fuck with them.

I can't remember what happened afterward. I'm assuming she won out.

It's amazing what one song you hear on the radio reminds you of.

1983. I think.