Now that I’ve dedicated some time and energy to writing about my good friend Amanda and my sister Big Big, it’s seems wrong not to complete the Imbecile Trilogy.
Now, Amanda and Big may have their blonde moments, but there has been one person in my life that make the two of them look like a small think tank, and that person is my ex, Tony.
Here’s the first great thing about Tony: His name was actually Marc.
People just called him Tony because he looked eerily like Tony Soprano. I never knew that wasn’t his real name until the day I asked him about the great white shark with a hundred dollar bill in it’s jaw tattooed on his chest. The hundred dollar bill part was self explanatory given his job, but the shark? Tony explained that his nickname was Marc the Shark... God bless that Italian brainpower.
Tony’s other tattoos, which were fully displayed daily while he sat tanning on the astro turf lawn of his social club, were
1) Jesus Christ on a cross (he asked me if I knew who that was)
2) An Italian flag (he had a lot of Italian pride, and explained that Italians were better than immigrants because “them immigrants don’t speak English good”)
3) Al Capone (seriously)
4) A tiger (with script that read “eye of the tiger”
5) A parrot (for some indiscernible reason), and
6) A portrait of his dead mother.
Tony spoke about his mother, who had died when he was very young, only once. I asked him if he knew what her maiden name was. He said “No babe, what is it?”. Baffled, I told him I couldn’t possibly know what his mother’s maiden name was, and he said “Well, I just thought you were asking me ‘cause you knew. You always know weird stuff. Like all the answers to those questions they have on that show.” I thought for a moment which show might have lead him to believe that I have psychic powers.
“You mean... Jeopardy?” That was exactly what he meant.
In my defense, although really why bother, when we started going out I was living with a girl who had recently turned to “massage with release” as her main means of employment, and I thought having a gigantic, gun wielding Italian on call couldn’t hurt.
The first few months were actually pretty good... he took me out for eight course Italian feats every night (which I why I looked like that), and I did score some sweet velour track suits, gold chains and fur jackets.
And we did have our good times, walking around little Italy on warm, spring nights, picking up envelopes from terrified shop keepers on my days off, shopping for baseball bats on weekends.
But things started to go down hill briefly after he told me that he loved me... and also that I loved him... and that I was going to be his girlfriend from now on. Whether I liked it or not.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Tony was a fairly possessive man, which actually I really like.
I love when the guy I’m with steps up to some other dude who’s checking me out and tells him to back off... following that up by pulling a switchblade and telling the guy that if he looks at me again he’ll get his eye stabbed out, was a little excessive though, I felt.
Needless to say, the break up took a while. The first three times I told Tony I wanted to break up, he just said no, flat out. When I stopped returning his calls, he waiting outside my apartment. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He did, however, take me jumping out of his moving vehicle screaming after he threatened to kill me if I left him for an answer.
I still had my dates drop me off a couple of blocks from my front door for the rest of that summer though. Just to be on the safe side.
Sometimes I wonder what he’s doing now. My bet would be that it probably involves lasagna in some way.
