Another installment of Franky Benítez. For a full list of chapters, click here: Table of Contents
Franky Benítez fell in love for the only time in his life on a Friday night in the South End during the first act of a local lesbian farce. The playwrights were a socialist couple from Davis Square who had staged a comedy about a five-women band in London struggling with finances, record deals, and relationships. The reviews in the Globe had called Five Punks “unique, stylish, and edgy.” Franky convinced his roommate Martin to take the T with him from Central and head into town. Martin had spent most of the day smoking pot and reading Tolstoy, but when Franky bribed him with a roast beef sandwich from Buzzy’s before the show, he finally got showered, shaved and changed into a fresh pair of clothes.
“Let’s go see some lesbian punks,” Franky said, as they left their apartment.
The ride on the Red Line was bumpy and cramped, full of Harvard, Tufts, and MIT sweatshirts, and young people who were still unsure about whether an X would be the best letter to describe their generation. Franky and Martin, two New Yorkers now living in Cambridge, always felt that when compared to the New York City subway, the T was a line of toy trains. Unlike a 4 or an A or a D rumbling though Manhattan’s underground, Boston’s Red Line was Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy. It crawled past Kendall Square, over the Salt and Pepper Bridge and into Charles Street. By then, Franky and Martin would be so impatient with the train’s pace, they would get off at Charles, grab two roast beef and Russian dressing sandwiches at Buzzy’s and walk through Beacon Hill, into the heart of the Back Bay and then finish at the South End. To the roommates, a 15-minute walk in Boston would take you across three or four neighborhoods, unlike Manhattan, where walking from 1st to 5th was an army march. Once Martin was so high during one of their walks that he told Franky that Boston was too tiny and he felt like Gulliver in Lilliput, each giant step eating up a mile of terrain.
The theatre was a black box space on the corner of Berkeley and Tremont, about three blocks from the publishing company where Franky worked. The South End was a neighborhood in transition, but it was the one place where Boston felt like Manhattan. In the early 19th century, this part of Boston didn’t even exist, as it was just tidal marsh, but as the city grew and fill was transported from the city’s outer suburbs to form the South End and eventually the Back Bay, the neighborhood became the final stop of the Boston and Providence Railroad line. All the bowfront buildings that gave the South End its charm had always reminded Franky of Manhattan’s brownstones. The South End, once a white Protestant district after the Civil War, began to attract Irish Catholic immigrants as well as blacks from nearby Roxbury, and Boston’s white middle class fled the neighborhood, adding to the city’s racist past. Soon, tenements ruled the neighborhood, a place for new arrivals to share rooms together and by the 1940s gay men began to live there. Jazz took over parts of the neighborhood in the 1950s, and Franky recalled the time Martin and he went to the original Wally’s Paradise to catch Arturo Sandoval. After the city’s jazz age, the district became poorer for the next twenty years and it was common to see empty bowfronts decaying. A few Puerto Ricans led a cultural revival at Villa Victoria in the late 1960s (Franky had always loved walking down Aguadilla Street in the winter and murals of Albizu Campos against a snowy backdrop), but it wasn’t until the early 80s when the gay community restored the South End into a neighborhood of hipness. Theater mixed with nouveau cuisine and people stayed out later into the night. This mini-Manhattan was all Boston had for Franky and Martin, and they found themselves spending more time there than in another place in Boston or Cambridge.
They sat in the back row of the black box, behind a group of elderly ladies from Newton who had read the Globe review and had ventured out into Boston for a monthly adventure. While the ladies chattered and read their programs, slowly enunciating the word “les-bi-an” to show off their new way of thinking, a group of younger and stylish men to the left of Franky were talking about a converted pub that had just started serving tapas from Barcelona. Franky made a mental note. Tapas in Boston? The city was changing. Finally.
The play began inside a cold, dreary flat in London’s West End as the punk rock lesbians were collaborating on a song inspired by their childhood love for Duran Duran. The dialogue was witty and English, and when Franky’s eyes focused on the character of Fiona, the sassy bass player from Belfast, his stomach swirled and somersaulted. Even though her wardrobe was styled after George Michael during his early Wham! years, her eyes transfixed Franky and made him ignore the other four cast members. Her eyes were green and deep, like an emerald gemstone reflecting into sunshine. Her accent was brass and northern, the wit in her speech displayed a raw energy that gave her presence. She commanded every action in the play, but made sure her fellow actors had their moments as well. And her body. Her body wasn’t thin and flat and Irish. Her body was full and Latin, with dark black hair that fell to her shoulders and framed her rosy cheeks. She was, as Franky found out later on their first date, dark Irish, having received the blood of the Spanish Armada when the English navy sank certain ships and sailors rowed their way to Ireland.
“Martin, that’s the one,” Franky whispered to his roommate.
“The one? The one what?” Martin asked. The pot had yet to leave his system completely and there were times when he would wander and his brain would shut down. This was one of those times, which were becoming more frequent. How the hell did he ever get into Harvard, Franky thought. He already knew the answer: Daddy’s Jewish money from the East Side.
“That girl right there, Fiona, she’s the one,” Franky said. “I’m in love, Martin.”
Martin smiled at his friend. “That’s cool.”
During intermission, Franky grabbed a program and read the bio of Siobhán McDonald (Fiona):
Siobhán McDonald is thrilled to be playing the role of Fiona. A native of Dublin, she moved to the Boston area with her family when she was six. She quickly shed her inherited Irish melancholy and has been performing in plays since high school. Siobhán earned her way into Emerson College, where she played the lead roles in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? and A Tribute to John Patrick Shanley. She is a recent graduate of the New Theater Conservatory, and was recently cast in the role of Chicklet in Psycho Beach Party, to be staged later in June at the Central Square Center for the Arts. She would like to thank her father and mother for supporting her dreams after all the years.
“Martin, I’ll be right back.” Franky said, as he jogged through the black box lobby and outside to Tremont Street. He searched around to see if the homeless flower peddler who was always walking around with roses in his hand was still selling flowers. Franky picked him out right in front of Hamersley’s trying to convince a middle-aged man to buy a rose for his lady. Franky ran over to the peddler, grabbed a twenty from his wallet and took the last of the roses. He returned to the black box just as the second act was beginning, short of breath but relieved that he had accomplished his mission.
“We’re waiting for her,” Franky told Martin. “You bet your ass we’re waiting for her.”
The actors came back on stage and began jamming to a Pistols-like song specifically written for the play called, “Love Can Hurt, So Give It To Me.” While the backbeat bounced off the walls of the black box, Franky Benítez began to imagine a life with Siobhán McDonald, the girl from Dublin who shed herself from her family’s Irish melancholy. Franky clutched the roses close to his heart. Love can hurt, as he already knew, but sometimes the hurt can be pure joy. And for the first time in his life, Franky Benítez felt a love that had nothing do to with his past. This time, this love was his, one he could mold and nurture. And there was no way he was going to let this love leave him. This love had nothing to do with his parents. For once, Franky would love and this would stay with him forever, faithful and true.
Poor Franky, all love and roses. I think it’s lust he feels and cannot separate the two but, I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.
I am jaded, I admit but so enjoyed reading this episode. Will be looking forward to my next fix.
We like to play with reader’s emotions. Thanks for the comment!
This is a beautiful story, Julio. You have a great way of pulling in the history of a place and blending it with the current moment to give the reader a broader understanding of the location. It makes the cities come to life in your prose, as though each one is also a character in the novel.
That is a nice comment, D. It is one of the things I am working hard to do with this piece.
In the first part of the installment you put before me a tough task:all descriptions of the lines,trains,Boston red line,then buildings,streets,districts…it will take time to read again and again and to remember/to remind you that English is not my native one/
..Your narrative is great,i’d say amazing and so vivid that i find myself sitting in the row and look around to catch something you might miss in your telling.Your power to show all the scenes so lively and colorful is admirable…
yes,you are BRILLIANT writer!
making me to give a look back and search for something more is good for you-for your reader,because he/she is involved in the story that look for a place to put himself.
I am glad that Franky fell in love with a girl with green eyes..guess why?
No ,i am not jealous …to make clear,it is about me and when i read the books i long being the main one/character/
I am so happy for him and buying roses is good idea ,there is no girl not being in love with flowers.
One love forever is possible ..
Almost to forget i used to acting in my school days,i love theater and the stage….just wonder ,whether i steal some pieces of life from you or you do it?something weird,lives mixed,or someone has been there invisible ,or there had been prepared the stage for new characters and living ones to meet each other…
As always, my faithful reader, I am humbled by your comments.
I love the way he sees her on stage and recognizes the Latin heritage. Not sure if that speaks to him looking for a connection or seeing something beyond the surface in her.
We will see, won’t we? Thanks and by the way, Franky Benitez is now on Twitter: @fbnovel
I really liked this. It brought up memories of going out on the town at night after paying a buddy for his company with a visit to McDonalds and kept me hanging out in Boston with Franky and Martin.
Very well done!
Thanks so much for that!
I like your descriptions of the lady, and Franky’s feelings for her. Wonder if he’s going to get his heart broken.
Ya think? Heartbreak makes for awesome literature. LOL.
Ah, this is great stuff, Julio! I found myself going back to the time I explored Boston with my sister-in-law. She lived in the Boston U neighborhood, not sure what End that is. I could picture the whole thing unfolding in my mind as I read it, because your descriptions, as always are spectacular. 😀
Thanks, Maria. And I have a special little surprise for you very soon.
That would be past the Back Bay going towards Brookline and Brighton.
Good story! Hopefully Frankie can get it to work. Your descriptions of Boston really brought the city to life for me.
Eric, really appreciate the comment!
Love the way you wove so much history into this!
By the way, I have finally connected your two names together! 🙂
Nice. Franky is my character and I am the author.
Beautiful Narrative! Your boy was in tragic shape there! LOL!