PROLOGUE
1995, Hartsdale To Hartford
My name is Eula Tessitore. I’m a New York kid, once removed.
Unlike Holden Caulfield, I do want to get into all of that David Copperfield crap, but I know most people don't have time to listen to it, and sometimes I'm just too tired to go there. Or the memory I’m trying to access can’t be found.
So here are the greatest hits.
My mother is from Brooklyn, your typical German-Italian baby-boomer raised in Park Slope, before it became glamorous. My dad’s parents were Italian immigrants originally from some tiny village near Calabria. He grew up in Corona Heights, Queens.
How they met and married is a story not worth mentioning, but suffice it to say they met young, got together and decided to start their life off in White Plains, which was what they could afford at the time, those crazy kids.
My dad went into the family business- All City Elevator Maintenance- and, with my grandfather’s backing, opened up a Westchester branch that did surprisingly well. By the time they decided to start a family, my parents were able to buy a cute little starter home in Hartsdale. “It has a good school system,” my mother always liked to say. Mom and Dad wanted a big family but stopped after three. First came my brother and my sister, two years apart. Then 7 years later, I showed up. I can’t say for sure if I was an “oops baby,” but I was definitely the baby of the bunch, and according to my siblings, spoiled as hell. The way I remember it, my parents were too pre-occupied with other things to give me the attention I needed, so they bought me things in lieu of spending quality time with me.
I was a hardcore kid with hip hop flair, just like all the other punk-ass mid 90s kids I ran with. I made it through high school like the majority of my social circle did- on a steady diet of weed, shrooms, neon colored wine coolers and lukewarm 40s of OE. Academics were not on my radar, to be honest. I skipped school constantly to head into Manhattan, hoping to map out a life for Future Eula, but somehow managed to maintain a solid C+ average.
As senior year started creeping up, I had vaguely formed dreams of being in the city full-time- maybe going to the New School to study photography or long-form writing, getting an internship at Vibe magazine- that type of shit. Or maybe pulling a Gwen Stefani and finding a bunch of ska dudes looking for a chick singer. Something. Preferably something far away from Lower Westchester. When I tried to talk to my parents about all of this, they just laughed at me and said I’d be lucky if they agreed to pay for 4 semesters at Westchester Community College. Then, when I tried to run it by my “good” school’s barely breathing guidance counselor, she basically said the same thing. I mean, I kinda get it, but it would’ve been nice if someone showed even the tiniest bit of faith that I’d be able to make something of myself.
So, I spent my last 10 months at Woodlands High School going through the motions and plotting my escape as best I could with limited options and a bad case of ADHD.
By the time graduation rolled around, my average had slipped to a not so solid C- and my fondness for drinking and drugging had risen exponentially. There was no sense in wasting my time or my parents’ money on community college, so I headed to the local Metro-North stop, grabbed a train to Grand Central, then walked my ass west through the stinky summer streets to Penn Station, where I caught an Amtrak train to Hartford, Connecticut, where I had a lead on a cheap room in a building that was functioning as a punk rock collective and Hare Krishna soup kitchen. Hartford was the home of U. Hart and Trinity College. My mother would’ve creamed in her pants if I’d gone to Trinity.
At the time I thought, “Maybe I’ll get my shit together and become the academic goody two shoes of my parents’ dreams,” But then again, it always seemed like an unattainable longshot. But at least the opportunity was there for me, if I so chose.
Once I arrived, I dove right in to all that was on offer. Most of that was not worth mentioning.
It took me 4 years of doing dumb shit to get tired of my self-imposed exile and as soon as the calendar flipped to 1999, I was ready to stake my claim to a life in NYC. All I had to show for my time in the hinterlands was a raging heroin addiction and the ability to flip decent weight in the streets without raising the cops’ suspicion. Well, for the most part, at least. I’d had a few scrapes with the law, but nothing that really rated.
Word of my lifestyle choices had filtered back to my parents, who were still ensconced in their suburban fantasy bubble. My sister had always been a total fuckin’ scocciatora.
Then, word filtered back to me that my parents were scandalized. I did not give a fuck what they thought.
All I knew was the 90s were about to be a wrap and it was time to take my act back on the road.
No sleep ‘til Brooklyn.
