Chapter 3: Come è dolce fare niente

Come è dolce fare niente
(How Sweet it is to Do Nothing)

To best describe my state of mind and my behavior during those tumultuous beginning stages of adolescence in further detail is in essence a somewhat easy task. For the most part, my experience was not unlike many.

I had hit my early teens, and what a mixed bag of biological and emotional development it was! Along with the fast-paced, forever-confusing, ever-changing anatomical and physiological landscapes of that period of adjustment—as is the case with all young people—came the arrival of the puberty fairy. But in my case, she seemed to have come with a vengeance!

She didn’t arrive quietly or with any measure of subtlety. No. For me, she came accompanied by the harsh sounds of tolling bells, locomotive steam whistles, and blaring car horns. It was twelve o’clock midnight on New Years’ Eve for my ever-rigid dick, and the party was just beginning! My fairy ushered in this new era donned in a sexy Sorelle Fontana laced bodice, sporting a tight black skirt, and wearing the hottest stiletto heels from Fredrick’s of Hollywood on her feet. She immediately set about her work, holding a lit Kent cigarette perched daintily between two fingers of one hand while sprinkling her potent magic dust over my stiff wand with the other.

Both my libido and my vivid imagination seemed to go into high gear coordinately. With more frequent, uncontrollable erections cropping up—and while happening at the most inopportune times—my trips to the loo for relief grew in number. These impromptu “jaunts-to-jerk” more often were goaded during the altogether customary cake and coffee klatches which took place almost daily in the kitchen and dining room at my parents’ house.

To put these gatherings in a clearer perspective, and to better explain their unique significance—not only in social and cultural terms but in relation to my frequent trips to the bathroom to empty my aching testicles—I guess I should diverge momentarily to describe my heritage and upbringing with a bit more detail.

As I had mentioned, I am full Italian. I was raised to love life and all the pleasures and pains that it brings. In my early life, I experienced all this bounty on a narrow inner-city street crammed with brick row homes in a tight-knit, working-class Italian community; a neighborhood located just blocks from the same type of community in a predominately Jewish section of town. I mention this last point because in essence there are very few differences between the cultural components of the Jewish-German-American / Jewish-Russian-American and the Catholic-Italian-American social experience on the same economic strata.

And by the way, there were many neighborhood Jewish women and girls—especially those who smoked—who ranked high on my facial sperm target list, believe me! Oy vey! The seductive face of my best friend Brenda Moskowitz, along with the extremely alluring visage belonging to her mother Ayla (not to mention Ayla’s fabulous breasts), were constant recipients of pent-up lust within my self-abuse musings. To this day, images of them sitting submissively and smoking—their eyes clenched shut, their painted lips in mid exhale—while I stand directly in front of them beating off and drenching their lovely puckers in ribbons of my admiring goy semen, still haunt me...

ahem ... Sorry, but I digressed again, didn’t I?...

Anyway, in poorer-to-lower-middle income Italian metropolitan neighborhood homes such as the house in which I grew up, this coffee/cake/gossip ritual was commonplace. Our home, like all the others on the street, had an unwritten “open door policy.” Because of that, daily life activities invariably hummed with social calls. People were busy, but there were breaks in the day. Here and there, neighbors sat out on their front steps chatting during non-toiling moments, really doing nothing but enjoying being alive.

Ah! How sweet it is to do nothing! Full enjoyment of life is attained by jumping in headfirst. However, as for contentment; there’s something to be said for just sitting back and taking ‘it’ in!

Along with the clamoring chorus of the kids’ voices shouting while they played stickball out in the street, the aromas of Cacciatori, rich tomato sauces (mmm, Sunday gravy!), sausage and Braciole cooking on kitchen stoves mingled with cigarette smoke and perfume in the city air. It was a daily festival for the senses beyond compare.

Eventually, more passers-by would arrive at our step, and the social call would inevitably move inside for fresh coffee, Italian coffee cake, or my mother’s homemade Cannoli and sweet ricotta cheese-stuffed ravioli. Although seemingly ritual and predictable, these gatherings were serendipitous by nature; happy and cozy events catered by my mother. They would spontaneously evolve as people dropped by. And just to complete this scene; more often than not, in inner-city Italian American homes like mine, those rooms—the kitchen and dining room—were the social centers, as opposed to, say the parlor or living room.

Oh, and I should mention at this point that most of my relatives lived within close proximity to my home. Aunts and uncles, cousins, their offspring and siblings—through immigrating happenstance and a need for family unity—all seem to coalesce within the same few blocks, some living within doors from each other. With all those family-related eyes and ears tightly grouped within a three-block radius, it was a wonder I had any secrets at all!