That’s Amore!

The lights beaming off the disco ball played tricks with the eye as they danced through Jimmy DiFreno’s chest hair. He was pretty proud of his chest hair. It was part of his culture to be proud of his chest hair.

He wasn’t much to look at. He didn’t have the classic chiseled looks of a Rudy Valentino or an Antonio Sabato Jr. You know, looks that could make the ladies swoon while simultaneously being a silent killer. No, he had the stereotypical looks of a James Gandolfini: Six-foot-two, two hundred seventy-five pounds, give or take. He knew that if he kept eating the way he did, he would most likely end up like the late great Gandolfini, but boy, did he love his gabagool. And spaghetti and meatballs. And pasta fazool. And pie. You get the picture. Not that he wasn’t a good-looking guy in his own way; it was just hard to get people to believe that he wasn’t in the mob with his appearance being the way it was. I mean, he was in the mob; in fact, he was the Don. I’m just saying he couldn’t hide the fact.

He usually dressed up very nicely in Armani suits. Still, when it came time to leave the cozy confines of his office in the back and get down on the dance floor of his nightclub, Stella, he donned a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt, unbuttoned halfway, so that his marvelous chest hair could rustle like dried leaves in the wind. He also wore a gold chain, which further accented the chest hair and Italian heritage.

He was at Stella practically every day; however, he only got out on the dance floor a couple of nights a week. He usually spent most of his time in the back room, doing books or other business. Most of which was not exactly on the up and up. Stella was a front for a more lucrative and less tax-collectible business. Obviously. Every decent mafia crew had several legitimate businesses: laundromats, restaurants, nightclubs, assassins-for-hire, birthday clowns, and so on. A mob without a front to hide behind was like a freight train carrying a cargo of drugs and running over a beautiful Mexican woman who looked an awful lot like Salma Hayek. Not sure what that means? Jimmy did.

He often got mistaken for a bear. No, not a real bear since having a real bear in a club would be weird. Keep up, dummies. Since he was hairy, large, and (some may even say) cuddly, other men occasionally hit on him. He had an ironic vibe about him that most of the overly macho men of the bear persuasion were guilty of affecting. Like Freddie Mercury or Rob Halford, that kind of thing. It didn’t happen too often since this wasn’t a gay club. But it happened often enough. And when it did, he would put on airs like it offended him. In reality, though, he felt honored. Not that he’d ever have sex with them; he didn’t swing that way. Unless it involved Joe.

Most mafia members, especially the Dons, had a little goomah on the side. A Don without a goomah was like a bald man picking up spare change. So, that’s why it shocked Jimmy that his wife, Charlene, had no clue. Of course, there was a possibility that she knew and just chose never to bring it up, but he highly doubted it. Charlene’s father was Don Figarazzi—the Don of the very famous Figarazzi family. The funny thing was, his name was also Don.

Anyway, when he got to the age that he was “too old for this crap”, he handed the reigns to Jimmy. Sadly, he had no sons of his own, and since Charlene was the apple of Don’s eye, he decided to give Jimmy the job. That way, his grandson could continue when he was old enough. This pissed off a lot of actual family members, including his brother Don, his nephew Donald, and his three cousins, Don, Don, and Timmy, but Don’s decision was Don’s decision, and so it stood.

Jimmy’s father-in-law knew he had a goomah on the side; it didn’t bother him. It wasn’t Don’s wrath that concerned him. It was Charlene’s. If she found out, not only would she cut his balls off, but she would also convince her father to have him taken out. Even though Jimmy was Don, Don was still the Don of the Don, and there were plenty of actual Figarazzis who would have been more than happy to do the job.

Don Figarazzi would have killed him if he had known just who Jimmy was fooling around on Charlene with. His best buddy, Joe. The Mafia community frowns upon homosexuality. It’s a sign of weakness. In Italian dialect, they call it a fanook, and Jimmy most definitely wasn’t one. Now, Joe, he wasn’t so sure about, but really, who was he to cast aspersions? Joe was his capo, best friend, and sometimes, lover. That didn’t make him gay, right?

Right?

You see, Joe saved Jimmy’s ass in ‘Nam. Joe nursed his dog to health when he didn’t have a paw to stand on. Joe gave him a place to stay when he got out of the army and had no place to go. Joe rescued his mother from a burning building. He and Joe opened their first hot dog stand together when they were just kiddies in Brooklyn. Joe tipped him off on some winning lottery numbers. Joe gave him grape soda when he needed a fine carbonated beverage. You may already know all this; I’m unsure how much Jimmy has divulged to you. And tonight, he got himself a nice hummer in the bathroom. Not the truck, although he had one of those as well. And that would not fit in the bathroom. By hummer, I meant he got his dick sucked by Joe. Oh? I didn’t have to explain that? You understood that already by the context? My bad.

Anyway, enough about Joe for now. The evening at Stella was in full swing, but Jimmy had his fair share of paperwork to do before he went home.

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