Tofers, Goofers
by Albert Russo
Gloria and Carlotta would
go and tell their mother on my uncle, like the
fact that he didn’t drink his three daily
glasses of milk or that he took only one shower
in the evening and not also in the morning, like
they were used to.
On another photograph, he
stands between the two of them like a pressed
herring, coz they weren’t exactly pinups.
They would devour incredible amounts of food;
their favorites were sausage, pepperoni and
bologna pizzas, meatballs on hero or ...
spaghetti sandwiches with French fries and tons
of ketchup. They were so proud of their Eyetalian
heritage, they deemed hamburgers too vulgar! Can
you believe that?
They acted like they were
Unky Berky’s bodyguards, with the difference
that he had to obey them on almost everything, so
that his uncle Luke and his wife shouldn’t
worry about his education at home.
What my uncle doesn’t
tell me is whether they tried to play doctor with
him - they were the type -, traumatizing him setchually
for life. That’s probably when he started to
doubt about his gender, going from arrow
(‘hetero’, ninny) to bike,
without even realizing what was happening to him,
then becoming fully homey - a prettier
word than ‘gay’, and much cooler, don’t
you agree? You’d better. Then he settled in
France.
The few love affairs Unky
Berky had with girls turned sour on account that
they always had the upper hand, causing mayhem
down under. In Milan he got involved with a
student who only swore by Karl Marx and Buddy
Spencer (even though these guys had been dead
long ago); she almost converted him to hard core
communism.
The woman that got hold of
him in Paris was half Polish half leopard, and
she almost clawed his eyes out once - he still
has a scar on his left temple. That experience
must have turned his boxer shorts around,
quashing his manimalism forever and
forcing him to concentrate on his feminine side -
he insists that everybody has the two in them,
whether you’re a boy or a girl … that
will be the day!
Yesterday we went to see a
musical on Broadway. To get those tickets though,
we had to line up for two solid hours in the
middle of Times Square in the freezing weather,
on account that we’d pay them only half-price,
tofers, they’re called, goofers,
I say.
That uncle of mine is so
stingy he has to buy everything at a discount,
even his underwear come from bargain stores. Well,
he must be darn happy, coz the Christmas sales
are on. What’s über amazing is that even
the French perfumes are cheaper here than in
Paris.
Thank Goddess he let me
cross over to a coffee-shop so I could get myself
a hot chocolate. After that, I was allowed to go
into the nearby stores that carried all kinds of
nifty souvenirs, T-shirts and sweaters with New
York written on them … as long as he could
see me.
Excerpt
7 from ZAPINETTE GOES TO NEW YORK by Albert Russo
|
