Michael`s Fire - Contemporary Locus

Michael’s Fire
by Steve Piccolo
When I was in elementary school our family made semi-annual visits to the home of my aunt, uncle
and their six kids. Big American family, house in the country, just the kind of people that made me
nervous. I didn’t grow up feeling so comfortable with the backyard picket fence suburban big family big
car sort of average Americans. They seemed brash, uncouth, almost violent, not very interesting.
Suburban kids were always very competitive. I could stand up to the best of them in sports that
involved speed, grace, strategy. But I hated competition that involved brute force. I was small, skinny,
studious. Probably a lot of my bent for books came from the fact that I was just plain intimidated by
brawn. American kids with what used to be normal English-sounding names also made fun of my
Italian surname, which does sound kind of funny to anglophones. Piccolo. The name of a ridiculous
little musical instrument. Americans didn’t know how to pronounce it, either. They would say Piccòlo,
with the accent on the first O. It was irritating. Then things got worse. An idiotic TV sit-com that
made fun of Italians (with a horrid character called Fonzie) featured an unseen family of next-door
neighbors called the Piccolos. They were always mentioned, especially their daughter, Jenny, but never
seen, which was the comic ploy I guess. Towards the end of the series, in the Eighties, Jenny actually
made it on screen, with an outdated haircut and a reputation for being boy crazy. The actress was not
Italian at all. She was the daughter of a famous Russian-Jewish comedian with a particularly sleazy
schtick, Phil Silvers. He even did a cameo as Mr. Piccolo on the show. The weird thing was that my
mother hated Phil Silvers. She always said he was vulgar and cynical. But she wasn’t Italian either.
There had also been a football player called Brian Piccolo. His sad fate --- death by testicular cancer,
always good for a laugh among genuine suburban American bullies --- was chronicled extensively, even
leading to a terrible tear-jerker film called Brian’s Song. One of the cool things about the guy was his
great friendship with a black running back called Gayle Sayers. Evidently until the late Sixties football
teams separated the white and black players, putting them in different hotel rooms when they were on
the road. When that racist policy started to crumble, Sayers and Piccolo became roomies. So their
intense friendship was a sign of a changing America, according to the film and the papers. Among
suburban American kids, though, the name Gayle sounded feminine, so they added gay jokes to the
abuse heaped on the two. It was all very irritating and made me afraid to leave the big city. In the city
kids had better or at least more pressing things to think about. All kids, city and country, though, had
one thought in common: making clubhouses. Even in big cities there were still patches of woods, or
vacant lots and abandoned buildings where you could try to stake out a territory. I think Mark Twain
had a lot to do with it. In elementary school there was a small wooded zone nearby, where we found
slabs of concrete that looked like they had been thrown there by some crazed giant. Evidently a building
had once been there but had been blown up, leaving cracked slabs of heavy reinforced concrete piled up
at random, forming caves, crevices, tunnels bristling with sharp reinforcement rods. We were told to
stay away from the place because it was dangerous, and there might even still be unexploded sticks of
dynamite around that could blow up and kill us. Nothing of course could have been more enticing. We
played there all the time.
The clubhouse-building instinct also had to do with forming gangs. Somehow kids would group into
loose alliances, not always with a specific name, but often from a particular school or geographical base.
The aggregations were seldom based on race, ethnic origin or even age, at least in the places I lived. It
was usually more a question of elective affinities. And there were also the lone wolves, the kids who
would do it all by themselves, erecting their own private monuments and occasionally inviting friends
over for a game of cards, a beer, a prohibited cigarette. Male bonding rituals included pissing and
spitting contests, penis comparisons and even circle jerks. Female guests were few and far between,
though the idea of attracting them to play spin-the-bottle or strip poker was foremost in many a
clubber’s mind. Most hideouts were supplied with some porno (Hustler magazines stolen from
distracted news-sellers, or the cheaper, poorly printed and incredibly sleazy mags one could find in trash
bins, full of classified ads with incomprehensible secret codes). Stashes of food and cigarettes were often
stored in buried or hidden picnic hampers. For the neophyte smoker a stay-dry hiding place for a pack
of menthol butts was essential, to avoid being discovered with the forbidden weed upon returning
home.
The best thing was to find an abandoned shack, but a lean-to hut could also be built from trash.
Wooded areas and vacant lots in cities were filled with the most intriguing rubbish, people would dump
all kinds of things there. One of my favorite mental exercises was to try to reconstruct the series of
events that led up to the loss of articles of clothing and other items strewn about in the underbrush.
How could
there be one well-worn high-heel shoe, one skimpy pink sweater, three mittens and a lipstick tube
gathered at the base of a big pine tree?
But back to my cousins. They were a rambunctious bunch, four boys and two girls, with a strange aura
of special weirdness. All but one were afflicted with a debilitating hereditary disease. The medicine used
to treat it tended to limit their growth, so they were small for their ages and had weird gray teeth, also
from the pharms. As soon as I was old enough to figure out what a hereditary disease was I felt very
confused and tormented about why their parents had generated such a huge family. I mean, if you
know your kids are going to have to suffer and probably die young, why go on making more of them
after the first one? The cruel twist of fate was that the second kid, in order of birth, had been spared. If
he was healthy, there was always a chance another one would be healthy too, I guessed. But the last four
all had the illness.
There was a certain odd forced good cheer at their house. Lots of noise, maybe from a ‘‘live now and
enjoy it while you can’’ sort of fatalism. Their father, my uncle, was slight of build himself and
invariably cheerful. Their mother wore a lot of make-up, including bright
red lipstick, and had the disconcerting habit of kissing me right on the mouth instead of the usual peck
on the cheek reserved for youngsters by relatives. She also smoked, which was interesting.
The third born was Michael, who was just one year older than me and usually quieter than the others.
My favorite was his younger brother, one year my junior, who had a very calm disposition. But Michael
was more interesting. He was wiry, angry, with a perpetual glare on his face. Scrappy. Usually with
scratches, bruises, signs of strife and physical contact on his face, elbows and knees. While the other
cousins seemed to take their illness in their stride and even find a strange hopeful togetherness about it,
he was obviously pissed off at the gods, his parents, anything and everyone. I couldn’t help being
attracted by his intensity, but he usually paid me no mind. Sometimes we would catch each other’s eye
when we were both being quiet, and he’d make a sort of face. I couldn’t figure out what it meant,
though. Like an eye rolling grimace.
One day --- I think it was Thanksgiving --- we arrived at the big house in the country early, and
immediately sat down to a huge holiday dinner. I always felt uncomfortable eating with that big family.
My mother wanted me to behave, to wait my turn and say please and thank you and generally act like a
well-bred child. But the six cousins made every meal into a free for all. They stole food off each others’
plates, fighting for the last portion of this or that, gorging themselves like they hadn’t seen food for
weeks. I wondered if that was because of the illness, or the medicine. Or maybe they only ate good stuff
when there were visitors. Maybe their parents had sneakily instilled this sense of famished competition
in them, like a litter of kittens fighting to get to the best nipples of a mother cat. You certainly didn’t
have to convince them to eat. None of that finish your vegetables business. It was probably just a
question of numbers. It’s hard to control six kids. And their mother was very laid back, more interested
in smoking and drinking and relaxing than in tormenting her kids about their manners. I refrained, as
ordered, from getting into the battle for seconds and thirds, and the food soon vanished.
After dinner, Michael suddenly asked me to take a walk in the woods. I was surprised because he never
paid much attention to me. I asked him if anyone else was coming. He said no, just us, otherwise we
weren’t going anywhere. I said OK. We walked down the country road and into a forest, the kind with
well-worn trails and sparse underbrush, lots of pine needles, a nice clean typical New England wood.
There was a big rock near a tall tree. Michael asked me to help him roll it over. It was heavy, but
working together we could move it. Underneath it there was a sheet of plywood, maybe one yard
square. Michael slid it back over the pine needles. There was a big hole. A makeshift wooden ladder led
down into the darkness. Michael descended first, then I followed. The light from the hole penetrated
enough for us to see that we were in a shaft that led to a big hollow underground cavern. Michael
reached into a dark corner and came up with a flashlight. Then he climbed back up the ladder and
pulled the board back into place. He descended again and pulled the ladder away from the shaft, lying
it down in the big chamber. Otherwise an enemy could pull up the ladder and we’d be stuck there, I
figured. But what if the enemies put the rock back? I guessed we could force our way out. The beam of
the flashlight showed smooth dirt walls, dangling roots. Stones were piled up in little pyramids. There
were some old chairs, car seats and tables made with packing crates. A plastic box contained some soft
drinks and snacks, with rocks on top of the lid to keep animals from getting inside. The place was
surprisingly dry, not the clammy, humid atmosphere I would have expected. Michael led me through a
series of underground rooms, at least three or four branching off from the main chamber. I asked him
why it didn’t cave in. Wasn’t it dangerous? Yeah, he said, it’s really dangerous. We could get trapped in
here and starve to death before they found us. Or suffocate. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody else
knows about this place. The odor of roots and soil was intense. He said the secret was to dig deep
enough, then it wouldn’t cave in. The roots held the soil together. I was scared and wasn’t sure what we
were doing there, but I was also astonished at what an amazing hideout he had… but was it his? I was
afraid to ask. He seemed to know where everything was. But a work of underground engineering like
this, with wooden planks, reinforcement beams at certain spots, like a mine… could a boy of 10 have
done anything like that all by himself? It looked more like the work of a group of bigger kids. Anyway, I
was too young to really be able to focus on such doubts, which soon got buried by the pure thrill of
being there, and the desire to think that my sick cousin was actually incredibly cool and resourceful.
Some of the walls had been covered with sheets of fake leather ripped off some old sofa, perhaps.
Symbols had been drawn, initials printed. Nothing very weird, mostly just names and the symbols of
local sports teams. A couple of those typical intertwined hearts graffiti things, the kind you see carved
into the bark of beech trees in parks. And there were beers in the plastic cooler. Did Michael drink
beer? I had never had one. He said we couldn’t do it, because it stays on your breath and you get caught
instantly by parents. Like cigarettes. I thought he was just trying to act superior. Then he stopped
answering my questions. He seemed to be looking for something. He turned over the packing-crate
tables, not bothering to put them back in place. Strangely enough there were also canned goods,
Campbell soup and stuff like that. Then he found it… a stash of books and magazines. Mostly
Playboys, comic books and other stupid stuff. But also books, books I had never seen at the library or at
home on the shelves. He said they were forbidden books. Aleister Crowley is the only name I
remember. I don’t know why but it stuck in my head. I still wonder if it was the Confessions, or the
Book of Lies. Or something else. And what were all the other books? I wish I had paid more attention.
Suddenly Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn seemed very far away. I put the roofbeams and the canned goods
together and remembered the propaganda films they had shown us in school the year before, about
what to do when the Russians attacked with nuclear warheads. Maybe this was what remained of
somebody’s project for an A-bomb shelter! Maybe they had started it and then abandoned it, or moved
away to another town. There was no time to ask. My cousin had a very serious expression on his face.
Michael said he brought me along because by himself he couldn’t move the rock. And he needed me to
help him complete a mission. It was time to burn everything and then escape through the hole. I
thought he was just trying to scare me. I asked him why he wanted to destroy such a fantastic place.
Wasn’t it his secret hideout?
He said it had been infiltrated by bad people and they had to be taught a lesson. We would burn
everything, destroy the ladder and shove the big rock down the hole. I told him we could start a major
forest fire, people might die. I didn’t want to be responsible for that. I stupidly thought of Smokey the
Bear and the things they taught us at summer camp. Fires can even spread underground and resurface
in other places. They can smoulder for days or weeks before breaking out again. Wasn’t that true?
He finally gave in, saying he would come back and do it himself, since I was too much of a sissy to
destroy the cavern. I decided it was better to run the risk of his scorn than to get punished for starting a
forest fire. We went back to the house. But not before he had made me solemnly swear to keep the
secret. No one, not even his brothers and sisters, had to know anything about that hideout. I promised
to
tell no one. To keep mum. Tom and Huck were back.
My ideas about life outside the city had been seriously shaken. There was something adultish and weird
about Michael’s clubhouse. Something interesting. I was kind of sorry we had left the place so soon.
But my parents were already worried. Where had we been? Why hadn’t we told anyone where we were
going? Everyone was very upset. We had been gone two or three hours. You guys missed all the fun! We
did bag races and three-legged races, and a tug of war. Now that was more like my idea of the horrors of
life in the country. I was glad we’d missed it. Soda pop was served and more games ensued. Even touch
football, a lame imitation of the Kennedy clan on vacation on Cape Cod. Pretty soon it would be time
to set the big table again, for a quick supper before driving slowly back to the city.
Just before supper I was playing checkers with my sister on the porch. Michael was watching, in silence.
I let my sister win. Then I asked Michael if he’d take me back there, next time I came to visit. I
couldn’t help it, I wanted to be sure. I didn’t say where we had been. I kept the secret. But he looked
angry. Then, right in front of my sister and the rest of the family scattered around the big porch and
lawn, he very calmly punched me on the jaw, hard enough to make it hurt and to make my lower lip
swell up. I was so surprised I didn’t even try to block the blow or defend myself.
Total chaos let loose, parents shouting, his older siblings shouting… he was sent to his room, without
supper. I protested and said I didn’t want him to be punished. I said it was my fault, probably. But no
one listened. My mother said Michael had a mean streak. He was the only one of the cousins that was
mean like that. He had problems. Everyone asked me what I had done, why he was mad. I didn’t know.
I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t tell them about the underground clubhouse. I said we had really
had fun in the afternoon and I didn’t know what had happened. Somehow I felt guilty… like they
thought I must have said something bad to him about his illness or who knows what. I mean, I always
felt guilty around those kids because they were sick and I wasn’t. I was lucky. I didn’t want to destroy
the world. I didn’t have his anger. I couldn’t tell them that I had refused to become his accomplice in a
major act of destruction that might finally have corresponded to what was in his heart. I didn’t tell
them he had tried to trust me, had mistaken my brooding silence for an affinity of character with his
smouldering energy. I didn’t tell them I had betrayed his trust and disappointed him, out of pure
cowardice and lack of grit. The main reason I didn’t want to start a fire was that I was scared about
getting caught and punished. I didn’t really care if the forest burned down or if people lost their homes.
I had something to lose. Michael was already serving a sentence, condemned without a trial. He had
punched me and I hadn’t even tried to punch him back. I knew I deserved it.
contemporary locus 2 – places rediscovered by contemporary art
Anna Franceschini and Steve Piccolo
Cannoniera of S. Giacomo
Città Alta, Bergamo, from 29.07.12 to 09.09.12
www.contemporarylocus.it
Project curated by Paola Tognon
In collaboration with Paola Vischetti
Project manager Guendalina Damone
Head of press office Alice Panti
Press office Francesca Ceccherini
Head of security and reception service Laura Grigis
Research support and reception Elena Vitali and Laura Pellegrinelli
Media Project Elisa Bernardoni
Graphic design Elisabetta Brignoli
Photographs Maria Zanchi and Simone Montanari
Video Beatrice Marchi and Marco Chiodi
Michael's Fire publication produced by Temporary Black Space, in collaboration with
contemporary locus 2 and Steve Piccolo - www.t-blackspace.com