To the Victor

Rick Sellano

June 2021

Italian rabbit stew is a savory creation combining the luscious, earthy meat with plum tomatoes, briny, Niçoise olives, and aromatic rosemary. A rich repast served at residences and ristoranti in Tuscany, “Stufato di Coniglio,” was regularly among my childhood fare.

Growing up in the colander of Italian parents and grandparents meant that escarole and eggplant had replaced the phosphate nucleotides of my DNA by age five.

My father hunted, my grandfather was a trained butcher, and my grandmother was an unsurpassed cook. To us, her homemade ravioli was just as life-sustaining and lovingly delivered as the insulin she administered to her nearly blind, diabetic neighbor.

Nonna loved me, unconditionally. Yes. There were times when she was strict and gently nudged my green branches toward manners and etiquette, but she also soothed my brush burns—both emotional and those I bore from a bevy of bullies.

Nonna was vigorous and hard-working. Installed on a high stool in her kitchen to watch her prepare a meal was to witness a marvelous performance. Her knife skills were not metered like today’s iron chefs but showed passion—and were equally precise. During these food-prep missions, I observed that she’d shelter her wedding bands in a cracked dish from Perugia, a piece of earthenware that sunbathed on the windowsill above her sink. I didn’t think it fair that Nonna’s routine protected her rings while her skin was allowed to be nicked and ravaged.

Wearing perfect posture and a spotless, starched apron, Nonna asked me to move for a moment. She needed to transfer the rabbit meat, my father’s morning quarry, and accouterments to her favorite vessel—a Presto pressure cooker—with its jiggle valve safety feature. I was intrigued by the massive pot with its screw-down lid, and simultaneously, based on my mother’s warnings, I was fearful of the hissing contraption.

Nonna planned to partner polenta and broccoli rabe with the stew. Back on my perch, I watched her set the cornmeal to boil and cut the vegetable. Nonna and I sang bits of songs accompanied by the Presto’s jiggle noise and the safety valve’s hissing sound. Then, without warning, our “Chim Cher-ee” world changed.

Beneath a mantle of perspiration, Nonna’s face slid from delight to dread. The pressure cooker’s safety valve had become silent and wasn’t jiggling a bit. I fixed on my grandmother as panic punched her gut—and her eyes doubled in size. I knew instantly from her appearance and replay of Mom’s cautions that the pot was morphing itself from a cooking vessel into a giant, metallic bomb.

Its black pressure pin was at full height!

My grandmother screamed, “Angelo!”

My father, scanning the newspaper at her kitchen table, immediately reacted. Nonna and I tucked back into the wall as Dad took his place in the kitchen to stem the catastrophe.

“Angelo! The pressure cooker’s going to explode!”

My father opened the kitchen door without hesitation, showcasing the three-foot drift of snow from a recent storm. Grabbing hot pads and then the handles of the deadly device, he telegraphed his intent. Dad was going to throw the iron beast into the snow.

“No!” shrieked Nonna. “Not the Stufato!”

Rethinking, Dad warily placed the pot in the snow, and we watched the pressure pin drop almost immediately. He successfully unscrewed the lid, which was only possible if the pressure was at a safe level.

Eventually, we sat to eat. I smiled at Nonna—and my grandfather, who had missed the drama and arrived in time to gorge. I dove into the meal, and everyone ate with gusto.

My father, our hero, who had saved us from near demise and was a few wolfish forkfuls in, sported a badge of honor. On his shirt pocket, two drops of the stew liquid were medallions to Dad’s courage—and his prowess that had bested the wild thing.

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A Summer Stage

Rick Sellano

June 2019

Presented at the June 2019 Read650 (“Stonewall + 50) Event before a room of writers, critics,  and literary-minded folks.

I was a short, slight, 11-year-old boy in the summer of 1969, a time when I happened upon a new form of self-identity. “I’m a faggot,” I said to myself in our back yard. Without an idea of its meaning, I spoke and enunciated the word with conviction. I continued the proclamation as I tried to twirl around my mother’s clothesline pole. I relished that backyard spot because copper-colored butterflies flitted about our nearby lilac bush. Other than reading under our big maple, which I did to nearly a compulsive excess, waltzing with the butterflies and smelling the lilacs were some of my favorite ways to spend that summer.

The announcement of my new moniker was not born from an epiphany about my sexuality. I lacked any idea about that facet of life! Understanding sex, at that point, would have required knowledgeable siblings or parents eager to launch into the topic. I’d repeat to myself, “I’m a faggot” because other boys in our neighborhood—older cocky, athletic chaps transitioning to young men with muscles—had attached that identifier to me. When this name-calling started, I didn’t mind. I knew that I was different from these boys—in obvious ways and in ones yet undiscovered.

Certain comforting truths existed on my stage of naïveté. I figured that “faggot” was a description that fit some boys, the world was all-loving and—much like the reliability of the butterflies outside—movie music was always playing in my bedroom. I was obsessed with a recording featuring my favorite performer—the soundtrack to the Julie Andrews film, “Star.” Owing to the movie’s abysmal box office results, the album was nearly impossible to find. I unearthed mine in a clearance bin at Woolworth’s and handily paid the twenty-five-cent cost.

A fan to the core, I adored everything Julie sang. Gertrude Lawrence and her friendship with Noel Coward—the story around which the film was wrapped—were unknowns to me. Before dinner, I lip-synched to the tunes and watched my performance in my dresser mirror. Mom, in the kitchen, had no idea that in my mind’s eye, I had become Ella Shields—an entertainer of early 1900s British music halls—portrayed by Ms. Andrews singing, “Burlington Bertie from Bow.” The jacket back’s photo showed Andrews spinning an umbrella for this number. I substituted a bamboo cane I had won at the previous summer’s fair.

Alone in my room, I imagined that most other boys were not having this much fun—or at least this kind of fun. And while it seemed that no one wanted to be my friend at that point, I didn’t mind too much. I imagined that Julie Andrews might have been a compatriot—convinced each time her jubilant rendition of the soundtrack’s “Piccadilly” filled my spirits with helium.

The wrap-up of each summer vacation, however, delivered anxiety about the end of the hiatus and unknowns of the new school year. That year was worse. My primarily pleasant father was angry with me, his rage born from what I told my mother about me being a faggot. “It’s what you call a small, weaker boy,” I explained to her. My brawny father, an athlete since college, saw things differently. He said to me while spitting from both anger and the word he emphasized, that I was “sissified.” He delivered it like one might state, “That hotel room is infested with bed bugs!” The emphasis was on the disgusting part.

At that point, all I had was his immediate, visceral reaction—without the benefit of time and its potential to buff sharp edges. I figured that some people thought that faggots were terrible, even repulsive—but I hadn’t begun to understand why. My father didn’t or couldn’t explain his meaning, leaving me to cling to my last summer of ignorant bliss—and that remaining week with Julie Andrews, books, flowers, and butterflies.

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Header image by Thomas Martinson.

Kitchen image by Paul Hanaoka.