Chapter Ten #2
“It’s something my parents always say,” Christian said, shrugging.
“Ferdinand Marcos—he’s kind of the boogeyman in our house.
He was the dictator back in the Philippines who stole, like, billions of dollars and put the whole country under military lockdown, and his wife had more shoes than Ivana Trump and Marla Maples combined.
He’s why my parents had to come to New York in the seventies. ”
“Huh,” Danny considered. “Well, I like that expression.”
“Me too,” Christian said, smiling. “They have all these weird sayings, my parents. ‘Whatever you do, Christian, think about it seven times first,’” he said, putting on a deep voice, presumably impersonating his dad. “Seven times? Please. Who’s got time for that?”
“You get along with them?”
“Mm-hmm.” Christian shrugged. “I mean, yeah. They’re really supportive of my dance stuff.”
“Oh really?”
“See, Filipinos love to brag. It’s our national pastime, after karaoke, of course.
When I was younger, they would drag me to every event in the neighborhood—church stuff, Kiwanis Club—and it was basically an excuse for my parents and all my titas and all their friends to just sit around and brag about their kids.
‘Ohhhh, Alma has her first piano recital on Sunday,’” Christian said in a swoopy high-pitched voice.
“ ‘Yes, well, John Mark just found out that he got into Stuyvesant.’ ‘Well, you know my Christian? He’s taking classes at the American Ballet Theater!’ ”
“That’s gotta be nice,” Danny said. “Them being supportive like that?”
“Yeah, I guess. But then they force you to perform. Like at Christmas? Forget it. Every year my mom and dad would clear the table and chairs after dinner and, like, make me dance for the whole family. ON CARPET! Ugh!” He shivered. “It’s so totally embarrassing, you know?”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“So then last year, I kinda went postal on them and was like, ‘Screw this, Mom. I’m not doing that anymore,’ and my dad got so mad, he punched a hole in our wall.”
“Whoa,” Danny muttered, his own head now swimming with similar moments of familial destruction.
“But honestly, I’m one of the lucky ones. I mean, they’re surprisingly okay with me being gay.”
“They are?” Danny couldn’t fathom anyone, anywhere—at least on Staten Island—saying the same thing about their parents.
“Yeah. I mean, not at first. When I came out to my mom, it was really hard for her. Like, she cried every day. And when I told my dad a few months later, he just kind of clammed up. We didn’t really talk for a while.”
“Huh.” Danny didn’t know what to say.
“He would just pray a lot. I once found this note in his bedroom, all folded up and in perfect cursive. It said, ‘Please God, let my son change his mind.’ ”
Danny kept staring down at the ground, at their feet, leaving a pair of footprints in the sand.
“But eventually they came around,” Christian said.
“I’m actually kinda surprised? Like they don’t ever talk about it, but they also don’t try and change me anymore, either, so I guess that’s something.
I think it’s because family is really important in our community?
Like, they know deep down that if they don’t accept me, I’m just gonna leave.
So they’d rather have a gay son than no son. ”
“Right,” Danny said, his throat feeling tight.
“What about your family?” Christian asked. “Are they supportive?”
“Huh?” Danny jerked up, a surge of blood rushing to his chest.
“About you performing?”
“Oh,” Danny exhaled.
He thought for a moment about spilling everything. About the apartment on Port Richmond and the night his father kicked his mother to the ground. About the fact that he didn’t really know if his father was supportive or not, because he didn’t even know where his father was.
“Yeah, they’re cool about it,” Danny mumbled, trailing off into a silent pause. “Hey, betcha didn’t know I used to be a lifeguard here,” he added, changing the subject.
“Shut it,” Christian said, his mouth hanging open. “No you did not!”
“Mm-hmm,” Danny said, smiling. “This past summer.”
“Did they make you wear one of those tiny red Speedos?”
Danny laughed. “No way, man! I had a pair of faded trunks that were, like, big enough to be a pillowcase.”
“Ha!”
“Yeah, trust me, being a lifeguard’s a lot less sexy than Baywatch would have ya believe.”
“Shh!” Christian said, giving Danny’s shoulder a shove. “Don’t ruin my fantasy.”
Danny rolled his eyes.
“Hey look, some weird kind of seashell!” Christian said, scooping his hands into the wet sand.
“Um.” Danny covered his smirk with his fingers. “I think that’s a tampon applicator.”
“Eugh!” Christian squealed, flinging the cardboard tube into the air with a yelp.
Danny doubled over laughing, falling to his knees and, for the first time in maybe forever, understanding the concept of “cracking up.” Christian crossed his arms, staring down at him, doing his best impersonation of someone who was annoyed, all the while trying to hide his chipped-tooth grin.
“All right, Mr. Tour Guide,” Christian said in a snooty voice. “Is there anywhere to get a bite to eat around here? I’m mad starved.”
“Yeah, gimme a hand,” Danny said, pulling himself back to his feet and brushing the sand off his knees.
He thought back to the itinerary he’d planned out the day before. They were miles away from Frank and Sal’s and those fancy marble rye sandwiches that he’d imagined his friends ordering.
“Uh, yeah, I guess I know a place,” Danny said, squinting, looking back up to the boardwalk. “You want a slice-and-ice?”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure what that is,” Christian said. “But I’m guessing the answer’s yes.”
For the first time in as long as Danny could remember, there was no line at LaRocca’s Italian Ices and Pizzeria.
On a typical summer day, hundreds of sandy feet and sunburnt shoulders would wrap their way around the stucco corner of Midland Avenue, waiting sometimes close to an hour for a slice (each roughly the surface area of a Mad magazine cover) and any one of their two hundred flavors of lemon ice.
To an Islander, lemon ice was pretty much a blanket term for any flavor of Italian ice.
There was cherry lemon ice and rainbow and watermelon and blue razz and lemon lemon ice, of course.
After paying at the walk-up window, they carried their steaming slices and their paper cups packed with sugary snowballs to a bench on the boardwalk that looked out at the Atlantic.
“So,” Christian said, fanning his mouth after taking a first, too-hot bite of pizza. “You ever gonna move to Manhattan?”
“Maybe,” Danny said. “I mean, that’s the dream, I guess. But who really knows?”
“Do most kids stay in Staten Island after they graduate?”
“Oh yeah,” Danny said. “They all do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, like maybe, maybe you leave town for college, but it’s never farther away than, like, Hofstra, and you always come back to settle down and have like a bunch of kids.”
Christian’s face broke out into a broad, jagged smile.
“What?” Danny asked.
“Nothing. I’m just trying to picture you as a dad,” Christian said, raising an eyebrow. “Actually, I can totally see it.”
“Oh you can?”
“Yeah, but as, like, one of those cute Upper West Side dads who wears, like, premium denim and pushes a stroller that costs as much as a car.”
“Oh really,” Danny snorted.
“Mm-hmm, but you’ll have to be one of those fun dads. Like, you perform in your Broadway show at night and then on weekends you change into your club clothes in your dressing room after the show and come see me host at the Roxy.”
“You’re crazy,” Danny said, shaking his head.
“What, you don’t think I can headline the Roxy?”
“Nah,” Danny said, wiping a drip of pizza grease from his chin. “Oh, trust me, if you say you’re gonna headline the Roxy, I’m sure you’ll do it.”
“What then?”
“I dunno.” Danny shrugged, embarrassed. “Me…being on Broadway.”
“Oh-kayyy,” Christian said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Just ’cause we’re at the beach doesn’t mean you gotta be fishin’.”
“Nah, it’s just…c’mon.”
“C’mon, what?”
“Christian,” Danny said, setting the paper plate down on his lap. “There are, what? Like two hundred kids who graduate from the Drama program every year? Of those, maybe twenty will actually do this for real, and then what? Three will ever get to be in a Broadway show.”
“So?” Christian shrugged. “Why not be one of those three?”
“I mean, sure, that’d be great. But—”
“But what?” Christian said, his tone sharper than before. “And speaking of, what’s this shit I hear about you not auditioning for Dustin Parker-Taylor’s replacement? Please tell me that’s just some dumb rumor.”
Danny looked away, fingers picking at the edge of his plate.
“Christian, I think you’ve got some warped idea of what I can do. People like you and all the guys in Drama? You’ve all been practicing this stuff since you were little kids. You’ve known what you wanted to do your whole life. Me? I just figured this out. And I’m, like…so far behind.”
“Danny, listen to me,” Christian said, dabbing his lips with a napkin. “It doesn’t matter when you figure things out, as long as you do.”
Danny looked up from his half-eaten pizza slice.
“And you don’t have to be perfect at something to be good at it,” Christian continued. “I’ve heard you sing, maybe not a lot, but enough to know that there’s something real there. Technique and whatever, it’s never too late to learn that. But that first part? That’s something you can’t teach.”
The pair sat in silence for a moment, Danny gobbling down his crust, Christian tossing his to a gang of nearby seagulls.
“So where’s our next stop?” Christian said, moving on to the Italian ice, which had already begun to melt down his arm.
“I dunno,” Danny sighed. “I’m actually kinda wingin’ this.”