Anthony Giglio (3:58)
I was only 15 when Papi died. My dad's dad. But I remember the day clearly as one, filled with all of the drama and yelling and screaming and recriminations you get when you trap too many excited Italians in small quarters. One moment of particular calm that stands out for me though, is when my mom came into the Florida room to call the Jersey Journal to file Pape's obituary, and with her parliament in one hand and a notebook in the other, she dialed the old rotary phone and read aloud, Anthony Giglio Sr. 75, died on June 16. And as she recounted everything, she finished and said thank you so much, hung up, got up to leave, and then stopped in her tracks and said shit. Doubled back to the phone, redialed and said, this is Rosemary Giglio again. I need you to take my father in law's obituary that I just gave you, duplicate it and run it with a second name. Tony Grimes. Yes. G R I M E S. That's right. Same obituary, two different names. Thank you. And she hung up. What I didn't know that day was that Poppy was, as they say in the business, though his legal name was Anthony Giglio. His less legal name was Tony Grimes. And he got this nickname back in the 20s when he and his cronies decided it would be fun to take the surname of the first cop who broke their balls in this Case Officer Grimes. So this way, if they were ever written about in the Daily News, the New York Post, the Jersey Journal, their name would be accompanied by the cop's name in quotes as a wink and a slap in the face to the asshole in blue who tried to fuck with them. Poppy was a bodyguard and a bookie who paraded back and forth to lower Manhattan every morning in bespoke suits and fedora hats, pockets full of cash, among other things. But by all accounts, he wasn't necessarily a made man. And this was his idea of keeping himself and his family safe. The last thing he wanted was for his three sons to get in the business. For my dad, the middle son and his favorite, this was devastating. He idolized my grandfather, worshiped his lifestyle, and was completely ready to get in on the action. So Poppy's decision really crushed him. And it meant that he'd have to get a real job. Poppy helped, of course, but he wound up being a dock worker. And most nights he would be loading and unloading freight. But by day, he got a little bit of the glamour by playing bookie in our local neighborhood. Thanks to Poppy. That is, until he screwed up so badly, betting with the house funds, that my mother had to actually step in and take over. Now, if you knew my mother, you would relish the irony that Rosemary Giglio, the president of the Our Lady Victories Library Guild and the secretary of the Holy Rosary Society, was also, for most of the 1970s, Rosie the bookie. Such that my sisters and I were never allowed to answer the house phone because it was invariably someone placing a bet. My father carried on like a broken man and constantly told me, keep your head in the books. Don't end up like me. Just as his father had wanted a better life for him, he wanted a better life for me. But what I don't think either of these men ever envisioned was what their alter ID would look like. Until I came along. And they didn't like what they saw. I remember so many Friday nights where they'd be watching boxing side by side in their armchairs, staring at me playing innocently on the floor with my Lone Ranger in Tonto, glaring through clouds of cigarette smoke. My grandfather would say to my father, you better teach that one plane with the dolls there how to fight, Junior. He's gonna need it. And my poor father would say, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this kid, Pop. I don't know. One day I was rolling out pizza dough with my grandmother, my Nana Rose, my beloved Nana, who lived upstairs My mom's mom and my dad got home from work as usual, angry and pissed off, and came barreling up the stairs, pissed because I wasn't outside playing stickball with Dino and Vinnie and the boys standing there covered in flour and wearing an apron. I tried to hide under the table, but it was no use. He knew where I was because he always knew where to find me. I was always up in my grandmother's apartment. I loved being with her. I loved watching the cooking shows with her, and we would test recipes together. But this was 30 years before Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse made cooking cool for guys in my Italian household. In the 1970s, Jersey City cooking was women's work, and my mere interest in it suggested something sinister to the familiar. My dad ordered me immediately downstairs to get my mitt and get outside to play catch. I knew it was coming. My dad was an amazing athlete. When I went to kindergarten at PS24, his picture was still in the dusty trophy cabinets, highlighting his baseball glory. So there we stood, 50ft apart in our dead end street, packed side by side with cars, and he starts whizzing his Nolan Ryan speed pitches at me. And I'm completely uncoordinated and completely terrified. And he lets me know it with words of encouragement like, catch it, God damn it. Get in front of it. What are you afraid of? Jesus Christ. My favorite was, don't throw it back like a broad. And the more terrified I got, the more I missed and the further I had to run down the street to fetch balls and slither under parked cars and be completely aware that dozens of neighbors were watching this pathetic spectacle. He was disgusted with me. And I was disgusted with me. As puberty hit, my mother decided that she needed to check in on my sexuality on behalf of the family. And she said to me one day, so, Anthony, when you see a pretty girl in your class like Mary Santa Pietro, does anything, something special happen? And as I squirmed and nodded and blushed, she said, because I want you to know that you should feel free to talk to your father about anything to do with that. I promise, I promise he'll be good. And so I took her up under advice, figuring this is a perfect opportunity for me to show my old man that I had a healthy interest in girls and that maybe, just maybe, I was his idea of normal after all. So into my room he walks. One night, it was a Saturday, they were getting ready to go out, and he's got on his black slacks and his wife beater tee, which he had before he put the good shirt on, and he sits in my bed and folds his arms and says, your mother says, you got a question? Go head. And I proceeded to ask the only question I already knew the answer to, which was, dad, what's a blowjob? I saw the rage rising in his face. And you need to picture my dad. Picture Robert De Niro crossed with Jack Klugman. Ed Elvis's black pompadour and long black sideburns, electric blue eyes and olive skin that was tan year round. He was ferociously handsome, but as he processed the question, his hands went to the flats of his knees as if he was getting ready to pounce as he replied, who asked you for one? Now, at that tender age, I had no idea that there was any other configuration to a blowjob than the Adam and Eve that my friends and I had always talked about. But when I realized in that terrifying moment what he was implying, I began to cry. And instead of him backpedaling and trying to make it better, he took another approach, which was, listen, here's a lesson right here. You got to know one thing, Anthony. Guys are assholes, and they'll always take advantage of the weakest. And you're friends with all these goddamn altar boys. So I want to make sure nobody disrespects you, because if they do, here's what you're going to do. You're going to grab whatever you could find that's close by and you're going to whack them and hit them until they're down on the ground. And then once they're on the ground, you kick them until they stop moving. You understand me? There's no such thing as a fair fight. Are we clear? And that ended sex ed with dad. But I really couldn't win. Ever. It was like this for the next decade, always being subjected to this tough guy rationale and humiliation and judgment. It just never stopped. And even into adulthood, after I had become a journalist and found a way to express my passion for food and wine by becoming a sommelier and a food critic, he still wasn't really impressed. And I remember going home for Sunday supper when I was in my 20s and I was really excited that I had gotten an assignment to go to Italy to cover a wine event. In an opportunity where he should have said, that's amazing, son, he actually decided to give me a reality check by saying, listen here, fancy pants, don't forget that we know who you are and where you came from. And the day you forget it, I'll be there to remind you. Now, I don't know why these words struck me this way on that particular day, but I began to vibrate with rage. And after years and years of holding my tongue out of both respect for him and fear of him, I let him have it. And I poured out 20 years of pain and anger. Pain over knowing that since the day he met me he'd want me to change. Anger over his demanding my respect and repaying me by robbing me of confidence and second guessing every decision I ever made as not manly enough, not tough enough, not goomba enough. Pain over every opportunity to bond as father and son that he chose to toss aside. And at the height of it all, I threatened to move away and never come back again. And I meant it. And then there was silence. My mother, no stranger to drama, crumbled. But my dad stared at me like I'd never seen before. He looked like I'd stabbed him and I was still holding a knife. And he said, is this what you really think? Don't you know, Anthony, that all I've ever tried to do is protect you? That's all I've ever tried to do. And then, for the first time since Papi's funeral, my dad cried hard. And so did I. And then we began to talk, really talk, like we had never ever talked before. And when there was nothing left to say, we hugged it out, we remanned back up, and we sat down for a dish of spaghetti with meatballs and gravy. My full name is Anthony James Giglio iii or Anthony iii. One word if you're family. I am the third generation of Anthony's born in this country. But because my grandfather was Tony Sr. And my father was Tony Jr. My mother insisted that I would be called Anthony emphatically. And it sticks to this day. And then of course, I met my wife Antonia, who insists on being called Tony with an I. And so you can imagine that when it was when we had a son after our daughter Sophia, naturally we named him Marco. And I had to break it to the old man that our loftily numerated blue collar dynasty ends with me. He was not amused. Your grandfather will be cursing you from his grave, he warned me. But we went ahead and christened Marco Anthony. And he threatened to call him Anthony Marco just to break balls. But he's accepted Marco not only in name, but in ways I could never have imagined as a kid. A few months ago, on Christmas Eve, we went to my parents house for the feast of the seven fishes. And Marco now seven, bounded into the house brandishing a dart gun and a football and demanded that my father get outside and play catch. Now all the while, Marco was telling my dad about the dinner that he and I had been cooking all day together. The lobsters that he killed and gutted with his bare hands, the mussels that he debuted with a needle nose pliers, the clams that he scrubbed six times before steaming them with shallots and white wine. My father was beaming as he looked at me and said, I wish my old man could have met this one. He's going to have the world by the balls now. You have to imagine that I'm quite happy how this is all turning out. Finally, after having many sleepless nights, worried that my son might be just like me, a sports phobic, kitchen centric pocket square sporting sommelier. But God has a sense of humor. Marco has my dad's arm, my kitchen knife skills and Poppy's aim with a gun. He is. He is the best of all of us. Thank you.
