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Requiem for a Velvet Gladiator

Kenneth DiMaggio

    When I was a young punk weighing about 98-pounds with 500-pounds of attitude, I had a chip on my shoulder the size of the egg most likely thrown by me at your pretty picture window. And when I got my driver’s license, I thought I was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So when one day a car behind me honks because I was doing something important like digging out some wax from my ear while idling at a green traffic light, I naturally responded by flipping the bird to whoever were the fools behind me.
    Three bikers in a car who were three of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.
    They chased me for about a half hour before finally cutting me off. “Not so tough now, are ya punk?” No, but luckily the locked doors of my old man’s Ford Fairlane were. If they weren’t able to rip them open, they were able to rip off the side view mirror. Luckily, the driver’s side window did not smash when one of Satan’s little helpers smashed the softball-size hunk of metal against it. After spitting on the window a few times and kicking at my door, they left me, but not without the warning: “We’ll get you next time, punk!” And as soon as they peeled off, I, well, instead of flipping them the bird, I drove home to get my father’s police service revolver.
    Like I was going to find these guys, even in this unhitched boxcar-size town that was New Britain, Connecticut. Even if I did, what was I going to do with a Smith & Wesson .38 Special with no bullets? (Should have checked before taking the old man’s gun.) Should have also expected that my old man would expect that gun before holstering up for work. Ohhhh, man...and when he didn’t give me the usual ass-kicking, I knew I was in for probably the biggest beating of my life. And when my old man sent me to speak with an old friend of his; some “character” he met from his early days as a beat cop; unfortunately for me, now a “friend”; someone who would knock some sense into me, a retired boxer named Tommy “The Gun” Mangifico, then I should probably get good again with God, before I could kiss goodbye my life, yeah, right.
    Already because of my 500-pound attitude, my folks sent me to a social worker. His name was Ted Poe, and I’m not kidding ya, Edgar Allan Poe was his ancestor. (But a great writer like that with such a boring descendant?) Edgar’s great-great-great grand-mutant or whatever was not having much success with me. So why would an ex-boxer, that no one ever heard of?
    “Oh wait, I did hear about you; your nickname in the ring, was ‘The Canvas Kisser’ right?”
    “Boy, if the rest of you was as smart as your mouth, you’d be a genius. Siddown and shutup.”
    Better do that at least; sit down, because even though he must be nearing seventy, Tommy “The Gun” was not a guy that took being spoken to with a mouth that was wise like a smart ass.
    You heard of boxers getting cauliflower ears? Well, Tommy “The Gun” Mangifico had a cauliflower face. Still, his slightly oversized visage blazed with a couple of advanced degrees from The School of Hard Knocks that he probably began studying at before he tied his heart up into a boxing glove: a mouth that seemed permanently drooped into a slight lopsided sneer; cheeks that shared a similar lopsided profile, (but the right cheek was higher than the left; vice-versa to the droop in his sneer), and the crooked tomahawk of a rock-hard nose that looked like it had been banged off of a Classical Roman statue and then ineptly glued back on its face. The perpetual cinder-sparkle of his eyes belied the heavy, almost friendly-looking droopy eye lids, and the surprisingly rich, steel gray pompadour of his crown gleamed and sparkled from a gel that looked thick enough to lube a car engine. His body was not as well preserved; what might have once been shoulders and a torso trained to take punishment, was a small landslide ending at a size 45 or 46 waist; his 18-inch or so shirt collar neck, was now like a wrinkled sagging elephant trunk. His wrinkled leather arms began to drip with flab, but his hands hung at the end of them like the splayed open paws of a bear; hands that still looked like they could knock one cheekbone higher than the other. Thus my lack of razor-sharp comment over his ivory, wide-lapelled polyester shirt, bronze polyester pants, and white leather loafers with gold buckles. Just the same, at some point I was going to have to ask: what 1970s couch did you shoot, and are there are any more of your kind planning to leave the bowling alley soon?
    “You know your old man coulda lost his job?” he said.
    Until now, I never thought about that.
    “All somebody had to do was find out about it, and your old man—good street cop; fair; would have been in the shits forever ‘cause of a punk like you.”
    He shook his head, and bear pawed fists or not, you don’t get a second chance to call me a punk.
    He shook his head at me and then said:
    “You stay here. This is my place, got it? Don’t even blink. When I get back, we’re going to have a talk.”
    He wobbled into the kitchen of this third floor tenement apartment. His living room—or was it part of the lounge where he shot the couch? Was decked out in equal polyester and plastic taste ripped off from the refreshment center at the bowling alley. Surprisingly, there was only one boxing picture of him; when he must have been at his prime, which must have been a million years ago from the way the glass framing his signed photo had jaundiced. Naturally, there’s going to be a pewter crucifix the size and weight of a Colt .45 on the wall, and what the hell? Everything else in this room—on the walls, the TV dinner table before his spot on the Lawrence Welk-dinner jacketed sofa, on the doily topped end and coffee-tables (Doilies? Tough guy like that?) had either a puzzle-in-progress on it or a finished, glued-together puzzle hung like it was a museum picture. This “Fine Art” seemed familiar; famous “Italian” stuff; same with the ash trays and knick knacks; I recognized one of them, though I didn’t know what it was called, but Mary holding a dead Jesus, yeah, I had seen that before. And I definitely knew that the glued together puzzle above the sofa was “The Last Supper.” Damn, even bowling would be a better hobby than this.
    The Gun then came into the room with a fizzly-iced drink and a plate of—mmm—Italian cookies.
    “I like the ones with the cherry jelly in the middle,” I said as I reached over to snatch—
    “AHHH!”
    “You don’t take what belongs to you,” is what I think he said. As I reached out for a cookie, the S.O.B. whipped my hand with the back of his; hard enough to leave a hot pink welt too.
    “What the hell...!” I said as I looked up at him, while holding my hand that still throbbed with the sensation of a dozen bee stings.
    But he had already moved on to the next topic.
    “I didn’t have a choice,” he said as he mashed down on what looked like two or three cookies at the same time. “My parents came from It-ly, but they didn’t know It-ly, and back then, you only had to go to the eight grade, especially if you were a kid who spoke his folks’ language better than his teachers. Teachers didn’t like that. Neither did my old man like the idea of me being in school. Told me enough school for you. Time you go to work. So at 14, I’m sweeping in a factory. So barely making a living a couple of years later in the ring, was a hell of a lot better than sweeping the foreman’s cigars and the workers unfiltered Luckies. I didn’t have a choice. But you—you! Ya selfish snot of a punk!”
    Without opening my teeth, I warned:
    “Don’t call me that! That’s the second time!”
    “You got opportunities! A good home! An old man—and because he didn’t kill ya for what he did, shows how much he loves ya!”
    “Hey, those guys in that car shouldn’t have messed with me!”
    “I betcha you messed with them!”
    Damn him.
    “And ya know what else? I betcha you been looking for that fight a long time!”
    “I guess you won the bet,” I mumbled.
    “I used to think so too, but fighting’s for losers. I found that out late. Ain’t I pretty? Like Muhammad Ali?”
    In spite of the toughness I had to maintain with this gorilla, a giggle still escaped me.
    “But not like you, at least I learned to appreciate who we are.”
    “Um—sorry, but I don’t go bowling.”
    “You see these pictures here?”
    “You mean these puzzles?”
    “You see these small statues?”
    “You mean, these ashtrays?”
    “That’s It-ly!”
    “You mean Italy?”
    “Our culture! A great culture! So’s everyone else’s. Thank God, I lost my prejudice before my first fight—the great white hope? What a bunch of horse shit dreamed up by newspapers! When it’s just you and another guy in the ring—but what am I doing? That’s what you want to hear, right?”
    “It’s better than hearing about puzzles.”
    “Well these puzzles—this puzzle here, is a famous Italian painter called Raphael. And that puzzle there, Del Sarto. And behind me—”
    “Yeah, I know, Da Vinci,” I sneered.
    “And didja know that he was also a scientist, an inventor? That he designed a parachute; they even say he came up with the idea for the submarine, the tank!”
    “Yes sir, our culture. I just didn’t think the Coliseum was a jigsaw puzzle, and let me guess—the Gladiator must be velvet.”
    For the first time since I stepped inside this velvet painting gallery, Tommy “The Gun” dipped his face to hide a blush of embarrassment.
    “It’s what I can do—to learn,” he mumbled. “I’m not that good at reading, but since it takes me a long time to do the puzzles, I can also take my time reading the small booklet that comes with them—explaining the history of what I’m gluing together. Look. I wish I could have seen all this stuff; wish I could have gone to It-ly...now, I’m lucky to do the puzzles.”
    “Well, I guess it’s better than going bowling. But I’d get rid of the puzzle still in the box—“
    I smirked, and then said:
    “The one showing those two limp-wristed fruits about to touch each other.”
    “What the hell is wrong with you. That’s from Michaelangelo! That’s God who just gave life to Adam! That’s probably the world’s greatest painting, and it’s painted on the ceiling of a famous chapel!”
    “Yeah, well, they still look like two limp-wristed fruits.”
    “You snot-nosed little punk!”
    “I said don’t call ME A PUNK!”
    And then POW! As I kicked over the TV dinner table with the puzzle he had been working on.
    It was like a gun shot had gone off in the room. Neither of us could do anything for the next ten or twenty seconds...but as those seconds began to dissolve, I began to cry while I softly prayed; Oh God, please let me take it back, please, please, please don’t let him hit me. I promise, I promise, I promise I won’t have ever be a punk again but as I was promising, Thomas Mangifico was struggling to insert two pieces of the puzzle I had just kicked over; his eyes were wide now and also wet. And his hands that I had feared, could barely steady themselves to connect two pieces of cardboard. No wonder it took him so long to put together one puzzle.
    “I-I’m—sorry, I’m—”
    “This is not your house, and you are no longer welcome here. Go. Go.”

    He could have killed me for what I did, and I don’t think my old man would have been that mad about it. Mr. Mangifico should have at least smacked me; that is what everybody else would have done, but he didn’t. He just told me to get out of his house. No one ever told me that before. Worse, I felt like I left something behind in his apartment, and there was no way I could get it now. Whatever it was, I felt about a hundred pounds lighter than I already was. I never felt more weak.
    I checked my pockets. Ever since the old man took the car away, I didn’t even have a set of keys. Yet getting thrown out of Mr. Mangifico’s apartment made me feel embarrassed, even ashamed—something I never felt for stealing my old man’s gun. And when I raised two fisted arms to swear at the world, I knew what it was that I had lost, and for what seemed like the first time ever, I felt what it was like just to have shoulders, and nothing else.
    But for the first time ever, I was no longer wearing the body of a child.

    The old man never asked me about my visit to Mr. Mangifico. He assumed I had screwed up once again. I don’t think Mr. Mangifico said anything to him about our visit. I also knew there was nothing more my father could do for me. Maybe that’s why he no longer yelled at me. Threaten to bring me to the police station. Let me sit in the cell for a bit. See how it feels. This time there was none of the high-pitched melodrama. The next time I got in trouble, my father wasn’t going to bail me out of it.
    So with no more car to drive and no eggs or rocks or even chips on my shoulder to throw at the world, I discovered of all places, the library. That was the only place where I could read about Da Vinci, Raphael, Del Sarto, Michaelanglo. As for the latter; that great painter and sculptor who carved masterpieces like La Pieta, he was also a bit of a punk himself. Somebody broke his nose for being a wiseass. He still had his hands though, and what hands they were to carve and paint the things he did, especially the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Especially what was at the center of it: the hand of God giving life to the hand of Adam—or was God letting Adam go? For better or worse, Adam was now going to have to be on his own.
    After about a month, I finally coughed up the courage to ask my old man about Mr. Mangifico. “Oh, you’re friend?” my father said. There was a pause before he tried to shrug off as no big deal: “Oh, he’s in the hospital.”
    I didn’t ask his permission to go. Before I went, I stopped at the local hobby store. Where I used to buy cap guns and plastic army men. There was one puzzle left of the Sistine Chapel.
    “Do I know this kid? He looks familiar.”
    Even though Mr. Mangifico was kidding, there was also a slight sharp edge to his tone.
    “I just came by to bring you something for what I did at your, um, uh,”
    I mumbled.
    “Siddown, you’re starting to shake like Jell-o!”
    Even though I was invited to sit, I kept the hospital chair a couple of feet from his bed. What happened to Tommy “The Gun” Mangifico? His neck and arms had about a thousand more wrinkles in them, and his cotton hospital gown looked two or three sizes bigger than him. His cheeks were finally even, but only because his face seemed to have shrunk as the rest of him lost weight. A lot of weight. His nostril had a plastic tube clipped at the end of it, and he still had enough energy to try and sculpt what remained of his hair into a thinned out wave crested with a little gel.
    “I see ya finally got some culture...!” he said.
    Now that he had welcomed me, he gave up the tough guy tone. It must have been hard for him with the way he now wheezed. Also, after each time he spoke, he briefly closed his eyes, as if each sentence cost him a great deal of physical effort.
    “Actually I bought this puzzle for you Mr. Mangifico.”
    He weakly laughed, and then said, as if speaking to himself:
    “When the hell did I become a Mister...just don’t put it on my grave.”
    And then to me:
    “Well, go ‘head. Open it up. Wish I could help ya, but...and you can use my food table over there...”
    As I dumped the puzzle onto his food tray table, I began to explain:
    “But I did read up on the artists you told me about. Some of ‘em...were kind of crazy.”
    Mr. Mangifico smiled.
    “Just like some boxers....” he said. “Say, did Ali fight Frazier yet? In Manila...from where I would march out of...and for the next few years...didn’t know if I would see the next morning...”
    His eyes did not open after the usual few seconds pause. His reflection of—well, I was reading a lot more than about Art. So Mr. Mangifico must have been one of the few to march—more like hobble away from Bataan or Corrigador after the Japanese invaded the Philippines right after Pearl Harbor. Still, I didn’t want to leave without putting together some of the puzzle. I knew he wouldn’t be able to do it, and I knew he would appreciate seeing at least the famous pair of hands, and when they were just the hands, why, they never looked more vulnerable, but also human. Well, at least he would see that part of the famous masterpiece when he woke up. The part I found it easy to put together in less than 10 minutes. Maybe his nurse or someone else—well, maybe, his nurse could help him put the rest of it together.

    The first time you see a reproduction of a famous picture in a book, you can’t wait to see the masterpiece itself. You just can’t help but feel, well, that the original painting or sculpture is going to be 10-times bigger than it actually is, and will glow like the first day of earth after God created it. Or whoever you believed created it. A great work of Art—it just had that sense of first-time ever creation about it, and by my late twenties and early thirties, I would begin to see some of that great Art.
    Shakespeare’s portrait in The National Gallery in London. The artist who painted it wasn’t as famous a the artist who painted La Giocanda. Didn’t matter. Shakespeare’s face was like—well, close to being like the face of God for a post graduate under-or-unemployed English major like me. I’m not talking about the woodcut-like portrait where Will looks more like a caricature. I’m talking about the realistic blazing stare from a half bald, somewhat long, shaggy-haired bearded guy with a gold hoop earring. Never the author you imagined while you were being tortured back in high school reading Romeo and Juliet. And eventually the author like no other for writing plays like As You Like It, King Lear, Hamlet. But it’s only when you see his portrait that you see more than just the world’s greatest author.
    You also see that he was a real badass.
    La Giocanda? Oh, hell, that name just makes her seem more pretentious. Nevertheless, I never expected Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to be anti-climatic. You couldn’t get a bigger build up when your museum is The Lourve, either. She even had her own room, and the day I visited her, that room was filled with more people it seemed built to corral. I still got a glimpse of the lady with the bemused smile; it was tougher to see the extra-terrestrial, or pre-historic like rocky landscape behind her—in my opinion, the more mysterious and beautiful part of the painting. Probably one of the greatest paintings in the world was not all anti-climax, as my slightly impish nature soon discovered. With all the Japanese, American, Western European and other tourists snapping their cameras at her (while some even tried to get their pictures taken close to her), the Mona Lisa had created a performance piece or temporary human sculpture called Middle Class Cultural Appreciation, which I happily took more than a dozen photos of.
    The Sistine Chapel. For the longest time, it just seemed like a big line, and then once I got inside, I was just exhausted. I was just happy to take in a few of the images above me. At future dinner parties, I, like my hosts, would all be able to say we had visited the Sistine Chapel, and what a great experience it was.
    And it was. Though maybe not in the way my highly educated and richly cultured hosts would never know about; folks who may have seen all of the world’s great works of art, but who probably never put together one jigsaw puzzle. Folks who might not understand, that the one riveting image for me of that great work of Art, was not in God giving Life to Adam, but in a son reluctantly pulling away from his father.
    A father hesitantly letting go of his son.
    A young man and an old man, knowing that however brief between them, there will always be antagonism.
    But also love.

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