#marquees for rent

[marqueeeventz]

Versatile 6m Spring Top Marquee for Elegant Events - Marquee Eventz

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[bettereventhire]

Discover Top Marquee Hire Services in Sydney for Your Next Event

Are you planning a special event in Sydney and looking for top marquee hire services? Look no further than Better Event Hire for all your marquee needs. Whether you're hosting a wedding, corporate event, or private party, Better Event Hire offers a wide range of marquees to suit your specific requirements.

When it comes to wedding marquee hire, Better Event Hire has you covered. Their elegant and stylish marquees provide the perfect setting for your special day, creating a beautiful and memorable atmosphere for you and your guests. From intimate gatherings to larger celebrations, their marquees can be tailored to accommodate any size wedding.

If you're searching for "marquee hire near me," Better Event Hire is conveniently located in Sydney and serves the surrounding areas. Their team of experienced professionals will work closely with you to understand your event needs and provide a marquee solution that exceeds your expectations.

For event marquees in Sydney, We offer a variety of options, including clear-span marquees, pagoda marquees, and more. Their marquees are versatile and can be customized with flooring, lighting, and decor to create the perfect ambiance for your event.

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[realtyhubph-blog]

3 BR Townhouse Ametta Place Alveo Pasig

Upscale living awaits! Pre-owned 3BR townhouse in Ametta Place by Alveo. 3 baths, maid's room, 2 carports. Luxurious amenities & prime location! East-facing for morning sun. ☀️ Inquire now! #JMListings

📍Ametta Place Mercedes Ave, Pasig, Metro Manila PROPERTY FEATURES TYPE: 3 Story Townhouse📐 Lot: 125 square meters | Floor: 183 square meters🛌 3 Bedrooms🛀 3 Bathrooms🅿️ 2 Carports🛏️ 1 Maid’s room with bath✅ In front of the Clubhouse✅ Main door facing East (morning sun) 🏊‍♂️ AMENITIES Swimming Pool • 24/7 Security • Car Park • Landscaped Gardens • Children’s Play Area • Basketball Court…

[alchemyweddingdesigns1]

Illuminate Your Dream Day: The Art of Marquee Letters

Wondering how to make your wedding day unforgettable? Marquee letters for rent offer the perfect way to illuminate your event with style and charm. At the heart of your celebration, these stunning marquee letters will add a personalized touch to your venue. The exact marquee letters for rent can be customized to spell out names, initials, or even your favorite phrase. Let Alchemy Wedding Designs help create a magical atmosphere on your special day. Ready to light up your wedding? Visit our website and rent your marquee letters now!

[alchemyweddingdesigns]

Rent Marquee Letters for a Memorable Event Display

Planning an event? Marquee letters for rent are the perfect way to make a statement. Alchemy Wedding Designs offers a variety of marquee letters, available in different sizes and styles, to suit any occasion. Whether it's a wedding, party, or corporate event, these letters add a unique and stylish touch. Enhance your venue with marquee letters for rent from Alchemy Wedding Designs. Browse our collection and reserve yours today!

[jadeannbyrne]

Jade Ann Byrne Presents: Neon Nights: The Taco Bell Cosmos

In the vast expanse of a future not wracked by dystopian cliches but painted with the neon glow of endless possibility, a figure stood beneath the celestial marquee of Taco Bell, a testament to the eternal human saga of late-night cravings. Jade Ann Byrne was her name, a contractor to this grand establishment, a caretaker to an army of automatons crafted in her own image. With a cascade of…

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Cause of Action 3

Warnings: dark elements, noncon, age gap, other dark elements. Proceed with caution.

Note: thank you for waiting! Please let me know what you think as it helps me a lot with ideas and I love interacting with you all.

Part of The Club AU

Mr. Barber –Andy– pulls into a spot along a street you recognise. You won’t voice why you find it familiar, that’s probably better left unsaid. Your nightlife is hardly relevant to a law office.

You get out and wait as he pays the parking pass kiosk and puts the slip in his windshield. He looks at his watch again. His apparent anxiety is adding to your own. You walk with him up the pavement and hesitate as he turns to cross. Oh, it can’t be.

You look up at the club’s marquee and repress any twitch of guilt. Of course you’d been there before, a couple times with friends, but you’re really not big on the scene. Still, you wonder what he would think.

It’s early. Door’s have yet to open but it doesn’t hinder him from walking along the brick front of the building and knocking on the double doors. You chew your lip. Your brain isn’t processing this properly. You have no idea what’s going on.

Andy looks at you and gives a rocky chuckle as he rubs the back of his neck, “client is a friend of the owner.”

“Ah,” you give a short nod.

“Not really our typical meeting place but he’s hard to pin down,” Andy explains, “we shouldn’t be long.”

The door opens and you’re greeted by a man with an imperious curl to his lips. Sleek black hair  combed back so the spiraled ends cluster behind his ears. Andy gives a tilt of his head.

“Uh, Laufeyson,” he points at him unsure, “I’m here for Hansen?”

“Ah, yes,” the man, Laufeyson lets out a long exhale, “I should charge him rent with how often he frequents. Come.”

He steps back and Andy catches the door, holding it for you until you precede him inside. The dark-haired man considers you with an air of discernment. You squirm as you glance around. This place looks a lot different with the lights on.

“Oh, this is my intern,” Andy supplies, “showing her the reins.”

“Hi,” you greet and offer your name. The man doesn’t acknowledge you.

“This is Loki, he owns the place.”

“Doors in an hour,” Laufeyson intones dismissively as he turns on his heel, “I’m certain you’ll find your way.”

Andy sniffs but says nothing. It isn’t until Loki is halfway up the stairs that he even moves. Andy shifts into motion, gesturing you into the main room of the club. He halts and looks around before pointing out another staircase; that one twisting and metal.

“I think it’s just up there,” he says as he continues forward and you scurry to keep up.

“So, uh, what kind of case exactly is this for?” You wonder as he stops at the bottom of the stairs and again waits for you to go first.

“Standard lawsuit. Employment contract breach. Hopefully, we can keep it to a deposition.”

“Mmm,” you hum thoughtfully, “is this the employee?”

“Employer,” Andy tuts, “burden of proof really isn’t on us, so there’s that.”

“Right,” you don’t head down the hall until Andy directs you onward to the door with a golden snake on it, “if he’s doing business here…”

You let the thought drift. It’s not really your place to say.

“You’re not wrong,” Andy says, “I’ve heard wild stories about this place.” He reaches past you and taps on the door with his knuckles, “an ex of mine, she apparently came here, liked to hook up with strange men…”

“Oh?” You blink but add no comment.

“Meanwhile, when I was married, my wife accused me of coming to places like this while I was working overtime to pay the mortgage,” he scoffs, “well, I guess that’s not important. Sorry. Just… this is weird.”

“A little,” you agree as his vocalisation of the fact eases the tension.

The door opens and you’re met by a man with a rather bristly accoutrement across his lip. You almost snort at the mustache but think better of it. It wouldn’t do well to mock this man’s fashion sense. He is a client after all and despite the venue, this is still a professional meeting.

“Barber,” the man greets as he leers down at you, giving a wink, “you brought some fun?”

“Hansen,” Andy growls back, a silty tone that makes you shiver, “my intern. Play nice.”

“Ah, I’m always nice,” he smooths a hand over his hair before offering it, “how are you, sunshine? Lloyd.”

“Um,” you reluctantly shake his hand and give your name, “I’m fine.”

“Fine, well, let’s fix that, come in,” he backs up and turns, strutting away in his tight white pants and shimmery satin shirt. He isn’t really dressed for business. “Barber, you hound, you finally got me. You better make it fast.”

He grabs a bottle and pops the top, “you know, I have a long night ahead of me.”

“I told you I had noon free–”

“Noon? I was still waking the snake–”

“Hey, cut it out,” Andy warns.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lloyd looks at you with a smirk, “she looks old enough–”

“She’s not here for that. So let’s get to it. I need the records of employment. What you sent me is a cocktail napkin and a snapchat conversation. That’s not gonna cut it.”

“Oh really? Like I said, it wasn’t really a contract. Not in the way she’s saying. Bimbo,” he scoffs as he pours a shot, then another, “it’s simple, there is no case.”

“If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Lloyd nears and offers one of the glasses. Andy sighs and stretches an arm in front of you to block the other man, “what are you doing?”

“You got this sweet little piece working late. I’m just tryna make it worth her time. You seem like the stingy type,” Lloyd sneers, “one shot won’t hurt.”

“She’s on the clock.”

Lloyd’s brows rise and he snorts. He doesn’t say whatever thought dimples in his cheek.

“Loosen up, you want some? I can get some scotch up here, old man.”

“I drove.”

“Uber,” Lloyd insists, “don’t be a fucking cock block.”

He elbows past Andy and presents you the shot, “there ya go, sweet heart. The good stuff. Top shelf. Whatever he pays you isn’t enough to get you a single ounce.”

You stare at the shot, then Andy. You know you shouldn’t and you really don’t want to drink. You tend to stick to a single drink on your nights out and dilute it with as much water as you can get.

“Um, thanks, but–”

“But nothing. Don’t let the geezer get you down.” He holds the shot almost in your face, “take it, sweet pea. Trust me, you’ll thank me.”

Andy nudges you gently, “it’s fine,” he grumbles under his breath as he takes out his phone, “I’m not leaving until I have something, Hansen.”

“You know what, I’ll give you better than hard evidence, something even harder,” Lloyd snickers as you take the shot but make no move to drink.

Andy backs off, rubbing his cheek as he turns his back to you. He’s angry. You can tell. You’re starting to wonder why he even brought you if he knew this man was like this. Maybe it’s good to get a taste of the difficult ones.

“Cheers, baby,” Lloyd clinks his shot glass against yours, “bottoms up.”

[dreamwatch]

Spotify Wrapped Writing Prompt

Look, I was pretty sure someone asked for this, but I can't find the ask and I've written it and I think I'm a little bit in love with it, so sharing anyway.

-----

#66 - Hard To Handle by The Black Crowes

Eddie hates waiting in line. Life is too short (a lesson he learned the hard way) for standing around waiting for things. With the exception of getting gig tickets or getting into those gigs. Both valid reasons to wait.

Maybe less so this gig.

It’s not really his scene, there’s more than a few poseurs in the line, but Kyle likes the band and, as so often is the case with them, Kyle gets what Kyle wants.

Eddie gets… a little less.

He’s at the stage in his life, at the grand old age of twenty four, where he craves companionship over sex. While his friends are still fucking around, literally in some case, Eddie needs to settle. Needs the peace and stability. And he’d never, ever, admit it to anyone, but he needs to be taken care of. The thing is, thats a hard sell in your early twenties. But Kyle got it. Got him. His need to be looked after. The fact that he had scars and trauma and health issues from ‘an accident’. He was okay with all that.

For a while, anyway. Things change though, right?

Eddie earns shitty money, so Kyle pays more of the rent, and he gets the sense more and more that one wrong move, one missed pay check, or fuck, if he lost his job, Kyle would throw him out on the street. What’s love got to do with it? as Tina would say. So he finds himself toeing the line more and more. Doesn’t argue about the stupid shit, let’s Kyle have his way more and more. Just little things.

Little things mount up to be big things, though.

So yeah, he comes to gigs he’s not really into and he sees bands he might not have bothered to, and he listens to music thats okay, but it’s not him, you know? Its like, him adjacent. 

And all of that is why he’s standing outside the Ritz Music Hall in Indianapolis, freezing his balls off, waiting to get in to see The Black Crowes.

Kyle got to talking to some people in the line, and Eddie just smiles and makes out like, yeah my god, great band, like he wouldn’t have been arguing a few years back about how Iron Maiden were clearly the superior artists. He doesn’t have the fight in him for those kind of arguments anymore. So he nods and smiled, hands shoved in the pockets of his shitty old leather jacket, scarf pulled tight around his face. Tight around that scar.

He zones out and he’s looking around, people watching, killing time. Eyes up and down the line as he keeps moving to keep warm. And he spots it, about thirty people ahead of him, that swoop of brown hair that he knows oh so well. 

No fucking way.

He tells Kyle he thinks he’s spotted a friend, won’t be a second, and all that, and then heads down the sidewalk.

“Steve?”

Chestnut Swoop spins to look at him, and he didn’t even need him to, he knew who it was. Knows that hair anywhere. Those shoulders, the way he carries himself, the way he moves. Eddie knows it all.

“Eddie? Holy shit!”

Eddie nearly gets knocked off his feet, Steve lunging toward him and practically pulling him off the ground into a bear hug. He’s kind of lost for a second, before he wraps his own arms around Steve and squeezes back. He smells good, and Eddie recognises his cologne. Eternity for Men. He picked it out for Kyle, and Kyle just scrunched his nose up and walked off. Steve’s wearing it. Something Eddie would have chosen.

Steve pulls back from him but hangs on to his arms, like he’s taking him all in. Eddie’s heart is thundering in his chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Actually, scratch that, where the fuck have you been?”

“Here, in Indy… mostly. It’s a long story.” Steve raises an eyebrow but Eddie plows on, doesn’t give him a chance for a follow up question. “What about you man, here to see... “ he points to the marquee up above. 

“Yeah,” answers Steve. “Yeah, there’s a few of us from work and, fuck! Robins here! She’s gone to pee,” Steve looks around, as if Robins pissing in the street, “uh, somewhere. Man she’s gonna lose her shit when she sees you.”

They talk, and Steve introduces his work friends and Eddie can’t help himself, he’s checking them out trying to work out which one is Steve’s girlfriend. Robin screeches “Eddie!” as she runs up the street, practically throws her self at him. He gets the overwhelming urge to cry. He’s feels like an idiot. 

“Eddie? Come on man, we’ll lose our place.”

Kyle comes up behind him, looking mildly pissed. He’s eyeing up Steve’s friends and then his eyes are all over Steve. There’s no way he doesn’t recognise him. Eddie has a photo album that he started putting together in 1986. Pictures of the kids, of Wayne, of Robin and Nancy and Steve. There’s one of the four of them sitting on the porch of Wayne’s new trailer, beers in hand, all cheering at the camera as Wayne took the photograph. Eddie and Steve practically in each others lap. That one is in a frame. Kyle clocked something there straight away. Eddie gave him nothing. Close friend, he said. Kyle huffed, sure. Subject closed.

It was the weirdest thing. And it wasn’t just trauma bonding, or whatever the fuck Robin called it. The trauma got them together, maybe, threw them altogether on a big spin cycle and spat them out, but Eddie and Steve clicked. They’d have clicked without it. So easy to say opposites attract, but they weren’t that different really. Not when you scratched the surface. 

And it wasn’t really anything but it wasn’t really nothing, either. There were late nights under blankets, and well you’re staying over and it’s cold so you may as well climb in the bed, dude, and I can’t sleep wanna go for a drive? and arms thrown around shoulders, and sitting side by side, knees touching. There were pinkies linked, hands over hands, lying in bed crying, foreheads touching. Nothing, but everything.

They had two good summers before Steve said he was moving away. Nothing for him in Hawkins, apparently. Eddie couldn’t hide the hurt, so he ended up burying it in the back of his van with his backpack and his guitar and left town first. Said goodbye to Wayne and just took off. He came back for holidays and birthdays, but if Steve or Robin did the same, Eddie never knew.

And now they’re outside the Ritzy Music Hall in Indianapolis and it’s November and its cold and Kyle is standing there like he wants to start swinging his dick. And Eddie? He just wants to grab Steve by the hand and run. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t run now. He follows.

“Um, I should get back,” he says.

Steve’s brows dip, like he’s confused. “Fuck no! Cut in with us. I’m not letting you out of my sight, dickhead.” Steve laughs but it’s stiff and his eyes don’t really leave Kyle. 

“We’re good, thanks.” Kyle throws his arm over Eddies shoulder, pisses on his territory for all to see and starts to drag him away, but Eddie pulls out from under him.

“Just a second,” says Eddie. Kyle cuts him a look, sharp and beady. Eddie reaches into his pocket, finds a scrap of paper. No pen. Shit.

“Ooh, yes, pen! I have one!” says Robin, and he loves her, and fuck he’s missed her so much. And her hair is different, and she looks so cool. It’s only been three years and he’s missed it all.

He jots his number down and hands the paper over, before snatching it back and adding another.

“Top is mine, or Kyles, I guess,” and he’s so embarrassed at that, “but the bottom one is Waynes. He’d love to hear from you.”

And so its goodbye, and call soon, and he’s back in line with Kyle and Kyle is in a shitty mood now. Declares how he just wanted to enjoy his night, and well apparently Eddie running into the best friends he ever had, the ones he ran away from so they couldn’t hurt him first, well that just fucked Kyle’s night right up. 

They’re in, eventually, and the band come on, and now Eddie at least has noise to drown out the thoughts ticking over in his head. He feels suddenly so empty, so cold. He has work in the morning, and he’s starting early and he could feign any number of ailments at this stage, but there’s this terrible little thought at the back of his mind that he could end up with all his shit thrown out in the street. 

The band play a slow song, one he knows is called Miserable and deep inside he’s laughing at himself. Kyle is swaying away, one step away from getting his lighter out by the look of him, so Eddie taps him on the shoulder and tells him he’s going for a piss.

There’s another line at the bathroom, everyone else jumping out during the slow song, but eventually he’s at the front, gets in an out in less than a minute. He doesn’t want to go back inside. He keeps looking around, hoping he’ll see the swoop, or Robin’s pink streak in her blonde hair, but the place is packed and it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. He fucks off to the bar instead. Another line. Why not?

The song changes, and he knows this one, intimately. It’s an Otis Redding number. He has a really intense memory of his dad singing it for his mom. His dad fucking loved Otis Redding. It punches something inside him and he feels breathless. He gets to the front, orders his Jack and coke, he’s in a go big or go home kind of mood now, and its not until he opens his mouth to order that he tastes blood. He raises his hand and touches his lip. He was chewing it and he didn’t even notice it. 

His mind’s in a fucking pit now, and there’s this song and he just wants to go home, but it’s not even his. Nothing is his. 

There’s a hand tapping on his shoulder and like, a fucking fight is the last thing he wants and the best thing that could happen to him tonight. He turns and gets a face full of Steve Harrington.

“Hey, you okay?” How does he do that? How does he just stay so reasonable, so considerate? Eddie ran away and they see each other for the first time in years and he could be pissed and angry but instead he just makes Eddie want to climb inside him.

“No,” Eddie says, honest for once. And then Steve’s hand is in his and he’s being dragged from the building, and they’re out on the street, and fucking Kyle, he’s going to—

“Hey, Ed, dude look at me.”

“Kyle—”

“Fuck Kyle.”

“What?”

They’re back on the sidewalk, with the smokers and the early leavers, and it’s fucking cold so he can’t hide the shiver. 

Steve rubs his hands up and down the sides of Eddie’s arms, because he remember. The way the cold seeps into Eddie’s bones and never leaves once it’s there. He remembers.

“I said fuck Kyle.”

“I have to…”

“You don’t have to do anything. You look fucking miserable, and I don’t like the way he talks to you. I don’t like the way you shrink when he stands next to you. You used to shine. He doesn’t make you shine.”

And what is he supposed to say to that?

“I’d make you shine.” Steve says that. Steve Harrington says that to Eddie Munson. Eddie stops breathing.

“I…”

“I’ve missed you, Eddie. So fucking much.” Steve looks right at him, eyes bright and wet. 

Eddie can barely answer, his throat tight. He sniffs, just nods like a fool in the middle of the street. “I’ve missed you, too.”

“Let’s go somewhere. Get some food or something.”

“Robin—”

“Robins fine, she’s with her girlfriend.”

And he just nods again, like a dashboard ornament. “Kyle—”

“Do you love him?”

“What?’

Steve laughs. “I said. Do. You. Love. Him?”

Does he?

He loves having someone at home when he is because he hates being alone. He loves having someone lie next to him in bed so that when he wakes up the world feels real. He loves having someone to cook for, someone to go grocery shopping with. Someone to hold when they’re having a bad day, someone to hold him when his world is falling apart. Someone to show his favourite films to, to play his favourite albums to, to share books with. To laugh with. Someone to sit in the drive in and hold hands with. He loves that.

But he doesn’t love Kyle. And Kyle doesn’t love him.

“You always know, don’t you?”

Steve smiles at him, that cocky little smirk of his. Gorgeous.

“I always know.”

Steve takes his hand and they walk together.

Side by side.

[cyberneticlagomorph]

The venue, because that's what it is not a court house or anything of the sort, is a grand old theater with a blazing marquee that proclaims "TRIAL TODAY" in bold black letters.

A red carpet has been spread out from the theater's wide open double doors like a tongue lolling from a toothless mouth. Either side is lined with jostling reporters and flashing cameras that summon a seizure aura almost immediately. You grit your teeth against the sensation and hope it's something small this time and not a fit of spasms.

Vehicles of every shape, size, and description stands in an anxious line at the opposite end of the red carpet, with their occupants exiting with just as much awe and applause as if this were some Hollywood get together and not a bid for a little boy's life.

When your turn comes the crowd falls to a hush as the Great Crow slowly spirals down from a gap in the clouds and deposits the cage at the edge of the carpet.  You exit first, sunglasses on in a feeble attempt to block out the buzzing flashing seething crowd that pulsates around you like ravenous corpse worms. You spot a familiar face in the crowd the same second he spots you, but you're faster by a mile and haul the scrawny brown haired man up by his neck.

"YOU!" The word isn't a word, it's a bark, a hiss, a growl between clenched teeth.

One Peter Benjamin Parker writhes in your grip like a bug with its legs pulled off.

How fitting.

"It's PASSOVER! PASSOVER!!!" Peter, or Benji as you used to call him when you were kids, gasps as he tries to loosen your grip. He says the words like a payer, like they mean something. "You.... promised... Aunt... May..." You scowl and drop him, watching him quickly scramble to his feet, rubbing at a neck that's already starting to bruise.

"I should kill you where you stand."

"You should, I totally agree with you on that BUT you promised my dear Aunt (may her memory be a blessing) that you wouldn't, no matter what I did." Benji gives you the biggest set of puppy dog eyes he can give you, though the effect is lessened by just how many eyes that actually is.

"She moved to FLORIDA Ben, stop telling people she's dead."

Benji clasps his hands together and does his best to look somber, "Sometimes I can still hear her voice..."

You try and fail not to smile at his dumb joke.

Benji holds up his camera, "C'mon just a few shots, my rent is due and I PROMISE I'll make you and the kid look good."

You scowl again and flex your fingers in a surprisingly threatening manner.

Benji shrinks back just a little, "...I'll even turn my flash off?"

You punch him somewhere tender and keep moving up the carpet, ignoring your growing migraine and the dangerous roar of your empty belly.

Any other reporters that get to close face your wrath and end up with their skeletons rearranged without breaking their skin.

Zeb is flanked on all sides by family members and snarling hyenas, safely hidden from the ravenous paparazzi as you make your way inside the darkened maw of the theater.

[marqueeeventz]

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[bettereventhire]

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[hide-in-imagination]

Heyy, i just read the oneshot of how Simonn proposes to Ambar so i was wondering how do you think their wedding is going to be like :)!

Omg people had asked this before and I never replied because my brain was dead and I couldn't think of anything— But here we go!

Okay, so, it would have to be in Buenos Aires because that's were most of the characters live. Yes, I know some of them are rich and could afford to go to a destination wedding (Cancún? París? Secret third thing?) BUT it's just way easier for everyone to just do it at their home country, and I think they would want to be considerate to their guests. (Sucks for Simón's family though, but again, they are rich, so they can afford to bring them over to Buenos Aires)

I don't think it would be an over the top wedding (because their lives by this point are already pretty over the top with Simón being a music start and Ámbar having whatever very successful job she chose to have) and I also don't think they would go for a church either (something Simón's most religious relatives would protest, but oh well)

So, I think they would go for an outdoor wedding with lots of flowers and just nature in general. They also wouldn't invite 400 people. They'd probably keep it to close family and friends (which would anyway amount to 100+ probably skdfn Simón's family is big)

As for the dress!!! I'm pretty sure Ámbar would choose something simple but elegant, and she seems pretty partial to the combination of lace and see-through fabric, so I imagine something like this:

(It was pretty much the first I found, if I find a better one I'll change it. Also, feel free to picture a completely different dress— I feel like someone's headcanons about their favorite characters' wedding is something that can be so personal and so sacred, so don't listen to me if you don't want to, just be happy with your own choices💖)

And, you know, she already rented this place once for a music video, why not also for her wedding?

You know why it would be beautiful?

BECAUSE IT'S THE SAME PLACE WHERE THEY HAD THEIR FIRST KISS

I MEAN, YOU CAN'T GET MORE MEANINGFUL THAN THAT

And it's also close to the water, which I'm sure Simón would like (even if this water is... clearly not as pretty as Cancún's crystalline waters sdkjfn)

(We're also going to ignore what this place is in real life— We're working only with in-universe information, people!)

BONUS POINTS IF SIMÓN'S WEARS A WHITE ROSE ON HIS JACKET— MORE MEANING!!

For their wedding cake, I'm pretty sure I already posted this picture before, but I'll do it again:

Again, elegant with touches of gold (very Ámbar) but also some Simón touches (the music notes). On top, they'd have little figures of themselves, OR, figures of their rollerskates one next to the other <3 (Or both, idk). And instead of that drawing of two heads, they would have "Á & S" 💕 (Also, the cake would have to be bigger, but you get the picture ksjfn)

So, yeah, they'd have the wedding outdoors, then they would head to a large marquee we're they would hold the reception (u know, the cocktails, the dinner, the party, etc etc). Simón and Ámbar would have their photoshoot first outside, around sunset, while everyone is enjoying the cocktails, and then join everyone else to give a toast and start the dinner.

The rest is pretty much like any other wedding. During the party, they would bring out some goods like costume hats, wigs, party glasses, stuff like that. I also once went to a wedding were they brought light up shoes for everyone sdkjnfn. I think Ámbar would really enjoy a light up cape— those are so fun. OH! And at some point, they would both bring out the CO2 guns😎 (everyone is absolutely drunk by this point)

So, yeah, they all have a blast ❤️

(Oh, and did I mention Simón teared up during the vows?)

(Well, technically, Ámbar cried, and seeing her cry made him cry, but who's counting?)

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[talkinfanfic]

Episode 305 - Talkin' Music with shineswithyou

Summary:

🎧 Find Talkin' Fanfic on your favorite podcast app. Or stream here!

Sara takes (kind of sort of) a break from talking fanfic and bandfic to talk about a different form of storytelling– music, and writing about music! @shineswithyou is a familiar face around Oasis and U2 tumblr, but what you might NOT know is that she has recently embarked on a writing journey of her own, with a substack blog about music and its place as the soundtrack of her own life.

Sara and shines talk about her blog, and the difficulty of “writing words about sounds”; how music is a language in and of itself capable of telling its own (and our own) stories.

Of COURSE we loop it back around to fanfiction and RPF (or, ‘real person fanfiction’), and how bandfic is, at its core, a pure form of love for the musical artist. Other talking points include: how awesome Bono is, and how we wish we could have been at Slane Castle in 2001; the perennial dysfunction of the Gallagher brothers; and the dichotomy of the U2 and Oasis fandoms.

Contact and Credits:

Theme Music: Kyle Laurin "Oasis Supersonic Theme" (Twitter: @cobrakylemusic)

Clips from "Pop Muzik" by M (℗ 1979 Robin Scott Limited) and "Marquee Moon" by Television (℗ 1977 Elektra/Asylum)

Tumblr: talkinfanfic.tumblr.com 

Instagram: @talkinfanfic

Email: talkinfanfic@gmail.com

Time caps:

00:00 - Introduction

14:52 - Interview start

23:07 - Music memories and growing up

30:40 - Tumblr and bandom

34:27 - the pf+hb blog!

39:32 - Blog entry 1 

44:40 - Tom Verlaine and Television

46:50 - Excerpt of blog entry 4

48:56 - shines’ music writing style and influences, and the difficulties of writing about music

57:15 - Art in the time of Covid and intentional listening

01:10:56 - More on Television’s style and ‘Marquee Moon’

01:22:22 - CBGB’s and ‘the scene’

01:28:29 - Music mags!

01:32:05 - Speaking of U2…

01:36:55 - The dichotomy of the U2 fandom vs Oasis fandom

01:43:01 - Rapid Fire Questions!

Episode References

“Pf+Hb” shineswithyou’s substack blog 

Shineswithyou on Tumblr 

Music vid for The Stone Roses’ “She Bangs the Drums” (title inspiration for the blog)

M - Pop Muzik (Official Video) (Youtube) 

Book - "Heartbeat" by Sharon Creech (Goodreads) - a children’s coming-of-age story told in free verse

Music writing rec - Liz Barker’s tinyletter (music writer and blogger, this is Liz’s main website: Words by Liz Barker ) Here is an an excerpt from her novel 

Blog rec - Hanif Kureishi’s substack and a piece he wrote which shines recommends 

Album - Nirvana MTV Unplugged (Spotify)

Album - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Spotify)

Trouser Press - “The biblio of alternative rock”

"The Too-Muchness of Bono" by David Brooks for the Atlantic

Achtoon Baby - U2 music blog project by Kelly and PJ

Fic mentioned - "The Passing of Peggy Gallagher" by Jeevey   

Fic mentioned - “Stop the Clocks” by savageandwise 

Youtube Clip from “My Beautiful Laundrette” (1985, starring Gordon Warnecke and Daniel-Day Lewis, screenplay by Hanif Kureshi. You can stream it on HBOMax)

Film Trailer for “CBGB” (2013) starring Alan Rickman

Book - Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 (Goodreads)

Documentary - Meet Me In The Bathroom (2022) - Youtube trailer stream on Paramount+ or rent on Amazon Prime Video 

Documentary - "Gimme Shelter" (1970) - “A harrowing documentary of the Stones' 1969 tour, with much of the focus on the tragic concert at Altamont.”

Music Video - “Dark Sunglasses” a single off of Chrissie Hynde’s 2014 album ‘Stockholm’. The album doesn’t appear to be on streaming platforms.

Youtube - Where The Streets Have No Name (Live From Slane Castle, Ireland (2001) (you can see the heart-shaped stage that shines mentions really well at about 58 seconds!)

Shines’ Desert Island Discs: “Achtung Baby” by U2 (but on another day it might be “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends” by Coldplay

Shines is listening to: “Lucifer On the Sofa” by Spoon (album, 2022) 

Shines is listening to: “Wet Leg” (self-title debut album, 2022)

Music Discovery - Paul Gallagher's MixCloud channel (Sara rec, Paul does a weekly playlist with tons of great and lesser known artists. You can listen for free and there’s no ads, but to get the tracklist you have to be a paid subscriber)

Justin Hawkins Rides Again (Youtube channel, and he has a new podcast)

Music Discovery - Shines recommends finding your local independent radio station with real human DJs! You can google, and most colleges have student run stations, and TuneIn is a site that has a “find a local station” feature you can try out!

Fic Rec - “cheaper than a dime” by harmonising (Beatles RPF, George & Paul gen) -  Shines says it’s a “beautiful, angsty study of Paul and George’s relationship, written in a choppy, time-jump style”

Fic Rec - “Dare, Disturb the Universe” by @penaltybox14 (ao3, Bruce/Steve)

Fic Rec - “Wharf Rats on the Stage” by @penaltybox14 (ao3, Bruce/Steve)

Fic Rec - “Fictitious Characters” and “You Wanted Me Alone” by @likeamadonnau2. Shines says: “gorgeously written and very meta - an alternative history of U2’s early days framed by Bono & Edge’s relationship, & written by them.”

Rapid Fire Questions (starting at 01:43:01)

Beatles or Stones?

Which of these best describes your inner rock star? (I picked ladies because they don’t get talked about enough): Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, or Stevie Nicks? 

What’s the best way to experience music? Live show, or headphones and vinyl?

You have a free Wednesday afternoon. Are you going to the Man City Match with Noel, or spending a day at the pub with Liam?

The Doctor suddenly appears with the TARDIS and offers to take you to ONE of the following shows: 

Jan 1969 - Beatles on the rooftop of Apple Corps in London

1974 - sneak into one of Television’s regular sets at CBGB’S

Nov 1995 - Oasis at Earl’s Court, London

Sept 2001 - U2 at Slane Castle, Ireland

What’s your desert island record?

Name a recent album you’ve been enjoying. 

Any music discovery recs? (ex. For me, Paul Gallagher’s mixcloud shows / Justin Hawkins)

Can you give me a couple of RPF band fics off your bookmarks list?

What does music mean to you?

[whileiamdying]

Remembering a childhood in the South Bronx.

As an aspiring actor, Pacino, seen here in 1972, would practice Shakespeare monologues while wandering the city streets.Photograph by Jerry Schatzberg / Trunk Archive

By Al Pacino August 26, 2024

My mother began taking me to the movies when I was a little boy of three or four. She worked at factory and other menial jobs during the day, and when she came home I was the only company she had. Afterward, I’d go through the characters in my head and bring them to life, one by one, in our apartment.

The movies were a place where my single mother could hide in the dark and not have to share her Sonny Boy with anyone else. That was her nickname for me. She had picked it up from the popular song by Al Jolson, which she often sang to me.

When I was born, in 1940, my father, Salvatore Pacino, was all of eighteen, and my mother, Rose Gerardi Pacino, was just a few years older. Suffice it to say that they were young parents, even for the time. I probably hadn’t even turned two when they split up. My mother and I lived in a series of furnished rooms in Harlem and then moved into her parents’ apartment, in the South Bronx. We hardly got any financial support from my father. Eventually, we were allotted five dollars a month by a court, just enough to cover our expenses at my grandparents’ place.

The earliest memory I have of being with both my parents is of watching a movie with my mother in the balcony of the Dover Theatre when I was around four. It was some sort of melodrama for adults, and my mother was transfixed. My attention wandered, and I looked down from the balcony. I saw a man walking around below, looking for something. He was wearing the dress uniform of an M.P.—my father served as a military-police soldier during the Second World War. He must have seemed familiar, because I instinctively shouted out, “Dada!” My mother shushed me. I shouted for him again: “Dada!” She kept whispering, “Shh—quiet!” She didn’t want him to find her.

He did, though. When the film was over, I remember the three of us walking down a dark street, the Dover marquee receding behind us. Each parent held one of my hands. Out of my right eye, I saw a holster on my father’s waist, a huge gun with a pearl-white handle sticking out of it. Years later, I played a cop in the film “Heat,” and my character carried a gun with a handle like that. Even as a child, I understood: That’s dangerous. And then my father was gone, off to the war. He eventually came back, but not to us.

My mother’s parents lived in a six‐story tenement on Bryant Avenue, in a three-room apartment on the top floor, where the rents were cheapest. Sometimes we would have as many as six or seven people living there at once. I slept between my grandparents or in a daybed in the living room, where I never knew who might end up camped out next to me—a relative passing through town, maybe my mother’s brother, back from his own stint in the war. He had been in the Pacific and would take wooden matchsticks and put them in his ears to drown out the explosions he couldn’t stop hearing.

My mother’s father was born Vincenzo Giovanni Gerardi, and he came from an old Sicilian town whose name, I would later learn, was Corleone. When he was four years old, he came to America, possibly illegally, where he became James Gerardi. By then, he had already lost his mother; his father, who was a bit of a dictator, had remarried and moved with his children and new wife to Harlem. My grandfather didn’t get along with his stepmother, so at nine he quit school and ran away to work on a coal truck. He didn’t come back until he was fifteen. He wandered around upper Manhattan and the Bronx—this was in the early nineteen-hundreds, when it was still largely farmland—doing apprentice jobs or working in the fields. He was the first real father figure I had.

When I was six, I came home from my first day of school and found him shaving in our bathroom. He was in front of the mirror, in a BVD shirt with his suspenders down at his sides. I was standing in the open doorway.

“Granddad, this kid in school did a very bad thing. So I went and told the teacher, and she punished that kid.”

Without missing a stroke, my grandfather said, “So you’re a rat, huh?” It was a casual observation, as if he were saying, “You like the piano? I didn’t know that.” His words hit me right in the solar plexus. I never ratted on anybody in my life again. (Although right now, as I write this, I guess I’m ratting on myself.)

His wife—my grandmother Kate—had blond hair and blue eyes, like Mae West, which was a rarity among Italians. We were the only Italians in our neighborhood, and she was known for her kitchen. When I’d be going out the door, she would stop me with a wet cloth, which always seemed to be in one of her hands, to say, “Wipe the gravy off your face. People will think you’re Italian.” America had just spent four years fighting Italy, and though many Italian Americans had gone overseas to help, others were labelled enemy aliens and put in internment camps. There was still a stigma against us.

Our little stretch between Longfellow Avenue and Bryant Avenue, from 171st Street up to 174th Street, was a mixture of nationalities and ethnicities. In the summertime, when we went on the roof of our tenement to cool off because there was no air-conditioning, you’d hear all kinds of languages and dialects. The farther north you went, the more prosperous the families were. We were not prosperous. We were getting by. My grandfather was a plasterer who worked during the week. Plasterers were highly sought after at the time. He had developed an expertise and was appreciated for what he did. He built the wall that separated our alleyway from the alleyway of the building next door for our landlord, who loved it so much that he kept our family’s rent at thirty-eight dollars and eighty cents a month for as long as we lived there.

I was an only child, and until I was six I wasn’t allowed out of the tenement by myself—the neighborhood was somewhat unsafe. My only companions, aside from my grandparents, my mother, and a little dog named Trixie, were the characters I brought to life from the movies. I had a little silent routine I did for my relatives from “The Lost Weekend”—starring Ray Milland as a self‐destructive alcoholic—in which I pretended to ransack an apartment, looking for booze. The grownups seemed to find it amusing. Even at five years old, I would think, What are they laughing at? This man is fighting for his life.

My mother was a beautiful woman, but she was emotionally fragile. She would occasionally visit a psychiatrist when Granddad had the money to pay for her sessions. I wasn’t aware that my mother was having problems until one day when I was six years old and getting ready to go out and play. I was sitting in a chair in the kitchen while my mother laced up my shoes and put a sweater on me to keep me warm, and I noticed that she was crying. I wondered what the matter was, but I didn’t know how to ask. She was kissing me all over, and right before I left she gave me a great big hug. It was unusual, but I was eager to get downstairs and meet up with the other kids, and I gave it no more thought.

We had been outside for about an hour when we saw a commotion in the street. People were running toward my grandparents’ tenement. Someone said to me, “I think it’s your mother.” I didn’t believe it, but I started running with them. There was an ambulance in front of the building, and there, coming out the front doors, carried on a stretcher, was my mother. She had attempted suicide.

This was not explained to me; I had to piece together what had happened. I knew that she had left a note and that she was sent to recover at Bellevue Hospital. That period is kind of a blank to me, but I do remember sitting around the kitchen table, where the grownups were discussing what to do. Years later, I made the film “Dog Day Afternoon,” and one of its final images, showing the actor John Cazale’s character, already dead, being taken away on a stretcher, made me think of the moment I saw my mother brought out to that ambulance. But I don’t think she wanted to die then, not yet. She came back to our household alive, and I went out into the streets.

As a kid, I ran with a crew that included my three best friends: Cliffy, Bruce, and Petey. We were on the prowl, hungry for life. To this day, one of my favorite memories is coming down the stairs and out onto the street in front of my tenement building on a bright Saturday morning in the spring. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I remember looking down the block, and there was Bruce, about fifty yards away. He turned and smiled, and I smiled, too, because we knew the day was full of potential.

Every few blocks were vacant lots where victory gardens had been planted at the height of the war. By then, they were wrecked and full of debris. Once in a while, when you looked down at the sidewalk along the lots, you’d see a blade of grass growing up out of the concrete. That’s what my friend, the acting teacher Lee Strasberg, once called talent: a blade of grass growing up out of a block of concrete.

One winter day, I was skating on the ice over the Bronx River. We didn’t have ice skates, so I was wearing a pair of sneakers, doing pirouettes, showing off for my friend Jesus Diaz, who was standing at the shore. One moment I was laughing and he was cheering me on, then suddenly I broke through the surface and plunged into the freezing water below. Every time I tried to crawl out, the ice broke further and I kept falling back in. I think I would have drowned if it wasn’t for Jesus Diaz. He found a stick twice his size, spread himself out as far as he could from the shore, and pulled me to safety.

Another day, I was walking on top of a thin, iron fence, doing my tightrope dance. It had been raining all morning, and, sure enough, I slipped and fell, and the iron bar hit me directly between my legs. I was in such pain that I could hardly walk. An older guy saw me groaning in the street, picked me up, and carried me to my aunt Marie’s apartment. She was my mother’s younger sister, and she lived on the third floor in the same building as my grandparents. The Samaritan threw me on a bed and said, “Take care, man.”

It was customary for doctors to go to people’s houses in those days. While my family waited for Dr. Tanenbaum to come, I lay there on the bed, with my pants down around my ankles as the three women in my life—my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother—poked and prodded at my penis in a semi-panic. I thought, God, please take me now.

Our South Bronx neighborhood was full of characters. There was a guy in his late thirties or early forties who wore a suit and a collared shirt with a loose, tattered tie. He looked like he had gone to a Sunday service and got ashes spilled all over him. He would quietly walk the streets by himself; when he spoke, the only thing he said was “You don’t kill time—time kills you.” That was it. Our instincts told us he was different than we were, but we just accepted him. There was more privacy back then, a certain propriety and distance that people gave one another.

When Cliffy, Bruce, Petey, and I got a little older, eleven or twelve, we spent hours lying flat on our stomachs as we fished through sewer gratings for lost coins. This was not an idle pursuit—fifty cents was a game changer. On Saturday nights, we would see guys just a few years older than us who had started to date, taking girls out to the movies or on the subway, and we’d get up on the storefront roofs and pelt them with trash. Sometimes we’d split up a head of lettuce and toss it at them. A string bean thrown from twenty feet away could really sting.

In the summer, we opened up the hydrants, which made us heroes to all the young mothers who let their small children play in the water. We hitched ourselves to the backs of buses, jumped over turnstiles in the subway. If we wanted food, we’d steal it. We never paid for anything.

We played the old street games, like kick the can, stickball, and ring-a-levio, which involved splitting up into two teams. If you could stick one foot in the circle that was the other team’s jail and shout “Free all!,” your whole gang would get sprung. Kids were known to jump off buildings just to get a foot in that circle.

We were always either chasing someone or being chased. When we’d see cops, we’d yell out, “Hey, what’s a penny made out of?” And then we’d all answer, “Dirty copper!” The cops would yawn or laugh or take off after us, depending on their mood. But we all knew the neighborhood cop on our beat; he kept an eye on us. I don’t know how much violence he stopped, but we grew to love him, and he got a kick out of us. I always thought the guy had a crush on my mother. He’d ask me questions about her, and even at age eleven I sort of knew why.

There were a few others in our little gang—Jesus Diaz, Bibby, Johnny Rivera, Smoky, Salty, and Kenny Lipper, who would go on to become the deputy mayor of New York City under Ed Koch. (I later did a film called “City Hall,” directed by Harold Becker, which was based on his experience.) But Cliffy, Bruce, Petey, and me were the top bananas. They called me Sonny, and Pacchi, their nickname for “Pacino.” They also called me Pistachio, because I liked pistachio ice cream. If we had to choose someone as our leader, it would be Cliffy or Petey. Petey was a tough Irish kid. Cliffy was a true original. Even at thirteen, he was never without a copy of Dostoyevsky in his back pocket. He had talent. He had looks. And he had four older brothers who beat the shit out of him every day. He was full of trickery. You never had to ask him, “What are we going to do today?” He always had a scheme.

Often, when I looked down from my apartment window, I would see my friends—a pack of wild, pubescent wolves with sly smiles—looking up at me from the alley, calling out, “Come on down, Sonny Boy! We got something for ya!” One morning, Cliffy showed up with a huge German shepherd. He yelled up, “Hey, Sonny, wanna look at my dog? He’s my new friend, and his name is Hans!” He had got it from somewhere. Cliffy wasn’t known for taking dogs. Cars were more his thing. Once, he stole a garbage truck. He also used to burglarize houses—at a certain point, he could no longer go to New Jersey because he was wanted by the police there. He would tease me because I never did any of the drugs that he was into. He’d say, “Sonny doesn’t need drugs—he’s high on himself!”

There was one thing that divided me from the rest of the gang. My grandfather had instilled a love of sports in me: he was a lifelong baseball and boxing fan. He grew up rooting for the New York Yankees before they were even the Yankees—as a poor kid, he would watch their games through holes in the fence at Hilltop Park. Later, the Yankees got their own stadium, known as the House That Ruth Built, after Babe Ruth. That stadium is in the background of a scene in “Serpico”—shot by Sidney Lumet with such beauty—in which my character, Serpico, meets with a crew of corrupt cops. It was filmed the same day the actress Tuesday Weld and I broke up, and, if you notice the look on my face, you can tell I was pretty sad.

My grandfather would sometimes take me to baseball games, and we’d sit way up in the grandstand—the cheap seats. I didn’t think of myself as being disadvantaged—the more expensive box seats were just another block in the neighborhood, another tribe. The difference between Cliffy and me was that Cliffy would see those same box seats and want to go down there. If there was a line to get into a movie, he’d cut in front of someone and just go right in. It was like nobody existed but him.

I played baseball for the Police Athletic League team in my neighborhood. Sports were of no interest to Cliffy and the other guys, so it was almost like I lived two lives: my life with the gang, and my life with my pal teammates. One day, as I was coming back from a game in a bad neighborhood, a group of four or five guys not much older than I was got the jump on me; they had knives and God knows what else, and they said, “Give us the glove.” They knew I had no money, and I knew I was losing my glove, which my grandfather had bought for me. I went home in tears. If only I’d had Cliffy, Petey, and Bruce with me. It wasn’t just comfortable for us to be together in our group—it was necessary.

At the edge of the Bronx River, about four blocks from our homes, sat the Dutch houses, or the Dutchies. Built by Dutch settlers, they were ancient buildings, now dilapidated but not quite abandoned. Herman Wouk wrote about them in his novel “City Boy,” describing the surrounding territory as an area of “odorous heaps.” When we felt really daring, we would venture out to those ruins, which were populated by wayward kids and runaways—Boonies, we called them, because they lived on Boone Avenue. Wild plants grew along the riverbanks, including bamboo that kids would cut down and carve into knives, bows, and arrows. The Boonies lived in shacks, and the lore was that they had poison on the ends of their homemade weapons.

One day, I was on Bryant Avenue and saw the rest of the gang limping back from the Dutchies, looking defeated. Cliffy was covered in blood. He noticed the expression on my face and shouted, “It’s not me! It’s Petey’s blood!” Behind him was Petey, blood gushing from his wrist. They had been making their way down a hill when Cliffy suddenly screamed, “Look out, there’s a Boony there!” He shouted out a name that was notorious in the area at the time. Even now I can’t bring myself to say it. Cliffy had only been kidding, but the other kids scrambled in every direction. Unfortunately, Petey stumbled and fell, landing hard on something sharp and jagged that sliced through his left wrist. The cut was so deep that it went all the way down to the nerves. It was horrible, all because of a dumb prank.

The doctors eventually stitched Petey up, but in a botched way, so he couldn’t move his hand correctly. Cliffy always blamed himself for what happened.

I’m taking a bath in my grandparents’ apartment when I hear a rumbling in the alleyway downstairs. From five stories below, the voices reach up to my bathroom window:

“Sonny!”

“Hey, Pacchi!”

“Sonn‐ayyyyyyyy! ”

These are my friends calling to me. But something is preventing me from leaping out of the tub, throwing on my clothes, and joining them. I don’t mean my conscience; I mean my mother. She is telling me I am not allowed. She says it’s late and tomorrow is a school day and any boys who come to shout in the alley at that time of night aren’t the sort of boys I should be spending my time with, and, anyway, the answer is no.

I hate her for this. These friends are everything in my life that means something to me. And then one day I’m fifty‐two, looking in the vanity mirror at my face, fat with shaving cream, wondering whom I should thank in an acceptance speech for an award I’m about to receive. I think back to that moment in the bath, and I realize that I’m still here because of my mother. Of course, that’s who I have to thank. She’s the one who parried me away from a path that led to delinquency and violence, to the heroin that eventually killed Petey, Cliffy, and Bruce. I lost all three that way. I was not exactly under strict surveillance, but my mother paid attention to where I was. I believe she saved my life.

Pacino’s nicknames as a kid included Sonny, Pacchi, and Pistachio, because he liked pistachio ice cream.Photograph courtesy the author / Mark Scarola

I was lucky that I had people who were looking out for me, even if I didn’t always appreciate it at the time. One of those people was my junior-high teacher Blanche Rothstein, who selected me to read passages from the Bible at our student assemblies. I didn’t come from a particularly religious family. My mother had sent me to catechism class, and I wore a little white suit for my first Holy Communion, and that was it. But when I read from the Book of Psalms in a big booming voice—“He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart”—I could feel how powerful the words were.

Soon I was performing in school plays like “The Melting Pot,” a pageant celebrating the many nations whose people had contributed to the greatness of America. I was there to represent Italy, along with a ten‐year‐old girl with dark hair and olive skin. Our class put on “The King and I,” and I was cast as Louis, the son of the heroine, Anna. I sang a song with the kid who played the young Prince of Siam, about being puzzled by how grownups behaved. I didn’t take acting very seriously at that point—it was just a way to get out my energy, and especially to get out of classes. But I somehow became the guy that you simply had to have in these school productions.

In eighth grade, we put on “Home Sweet Homicide,” and I was cast as a kid who helps his widowed mother solve a murder at the house next door. Before I went onstage, someone told me that both my parents were in the audience. It threw me off. To this day, I don’t want to know who’s in the audience on opening night.

Still, I felt at home onstage. I liked that people were paying attention to me. Right after the show, my mother and my father, who was now an accountant living in East Harlem with a new wife and child, took me out to Howard Johnson’s, and we all toasted my success. A feeling of warmth and belonging came over me. It was probably the first time in my entire life that I saw my parents talking to each other pleasantly, not arguing about anything. At one point, my father even touched my mother’s hand with his own—was he flirting with her? It all felt so easy and natural.

When I was fifteen, a troupe of actors, as if out of some bygone century, came to the Bronx’s old Elsmere Theatre, on Crotona Parkway, to put on a production of “The Seagull,” by Anton Chekhov. The ornate theatre seated more than fifteen hundred people, and an audience of about fifteen came to see the play. Two of those audience members were my friend Bruce and me.

I don’t know how much of the play I really understood, with all its unrequited romances and the tragic character of Konstantin, but I was riveted by the performances. I saw myself in the lives of those fictional characters.

From then on, I started carrying Chekhov’s works around with me, amazed at the idea that I could have access to his writing whenever I wanted. I had just got into the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, and so had Cliffy, who had also acted in middle school and was very good. In the mornings, we’d ride the train together from the Bronx and emerge at Forty‐second Street and Broadway. For the four blocks we walked up to P.A., we were mesmerized by the tourists and gawkers. One day, as we turned a corner, I saw Paul Newman, the movie star, walk by with someone, and I thought to myself, Wow, he’s a real person, with real friends he talks to when there are no cameras around.

On one train ride, Cliffy’s thoughts were focussed on the teacher of our voice-and-speech class. She was an intelligent and sophisticated woman whose claim to fame was that she had dated Marlon Brando. Cliffy said to me, “I’m going to feel her breasts.” From the way he said it, it was clear this was something he had been thinking about for a while. I said, “What?” He said, “Watch. You’ll see.”

The class began that morning as it normally did, with the teacher giving us our lesson in her deep, resonant voice. Before long, Cliffy got up. He said something to her, I don’t know what, and suddenly the two of them were tussling. Then Cliffy reached his arms around her from the back, turned her around to face the class, and there he was, behind her, with both hands on her breasts. He looked at me and smiled.

This was the act of someone with no propriety, no limitations, and no conscience. Most of the students were silent. I broke into laughter, as did a classmate named John. It was just an involuntary reaction to the shock of what Cliffy had done. I loved Cliffy, but I was genuinely horrified by this trespass. John and I got tossed out of the classroom for the day, which I spent in the principal’s office until my mother arrived and apologized on my behalf. Cliffy was thrown out of school, and then thrown out of his house. After that, he disappeared from my life for a while.

One afternoon, I went out for lunch at a coffee shop near school, and there, taking orders behind the counter, was one of the actors from the performance of “The Seagull” that I had seen in the Bronx. I was a little bit starstruck, and I said, “I saw you the other night! Oh, my God, you were so great!” I couldn’t believe I was talking to him. He seemed pleased to have a doting fan.

By day, he wore a waiter’s outfit, and by night he performed in a play. One was a job, and the other was his artistic calling. He was an actor moving from role to role and theatre to theatre, like actors have done for hundreds of years. This was how I came to understand acting as a profession. You did whatever work paid you so you could keep acting, and, if you could find a way to actually get paid for acting someday, all the better.

Just before I turned sixteen, my mother started seeing someone new. She would say to me, “You know, we may live in Texas or Florida,” meaning her and her husband‐to‐be. I was relieved in a way, but I didn’t see how I belonged in this arrangement. This man was around fifty; I thought, This guy probably doesn’t want me around, plus I wanted the apartment to myself. By now, my grandparents had moved farther uptown, to an apartment on 233rd Street, so it was just me and my mother living on Bryant Avenue.

Then their engagement was abruptly cancelled. The guy didn’t even have the decency to tell her in person. He sent her a telegram saying that he couldn’t go through with it. When she received it, she was sitting at our kitchen table, and I was leaning against the arch of our hallway. Four feet away was the door, which I was always aiming for.

When she told me the engagement was off, I actually said to her, “I knew that was too good to be true.” It was one of the most terrible things I ever said to her. How could I have? It bothered me that she was hurt. But it also bothered me that she wasn’t leaving.

My mother did not react well to the breakup. She was diagnosed with what the doctors called anxiety neurosis. She needed electroshock treatment and barbiturates. These were costly things that we didn’t have the money for. She encouraged me to quit school and go to work.

I stayed in school until I was sixteen, when I was legally old enough to quit. I was O.K. with it—I had never seen school as my place. At one point, P.A. had picked me to represent the student body in a photo accompanying an article in the New York Herald Tribune. At the last minute, I was replaced with another student, who was a dancer. She was tall and had red hair; I had my dark complexion and my Italian name. It crossed my mind that she represented a more mainstream version of beauty than I did; you didn’t see people like me in detergent commercials or on soap operas. But I didn’t think the school was being biased. Performing Arts was just trying to draw in more students, and this was the status quo at the time.

After I left, I went through various jobs, all short-lived. I spent a summer as a bicycle messenger. At seventeen, I had a successful stretch working for the American Jewish Committee and their magazine, Commentary. I said to the woman who interviewed me for the job, “I love sitting around offices. I love the sound of typewriters. I love switchboards.” I’m sure she saw right through my bullshit, but she hired me anyway. The people who worked there—people like Susan Sontag and Norman Podhoretz—were intellectual heavyweights, and, though they were very welcoming toward me, I never felt like I fit in. But, at an office party with a drink in my hand, I’d be able to talk to almost anyone.

At eighteen, I was nursing a fifteen‐cent beer at Martin’s Bar and Grill, on Twenty‐third Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. It was a place where I’d sometimes go and have ketchup sandwiches: two saltine crackers with ketchup in the middle. The bar had a big picture window that looked across Sixth Avenue, where I could see the Herbert Berghof Studio, an acting school I was trying to get into. A friend had told me about the school, and a great teacher there named Charlie Laughton. I said, “The actor Charles Laughton?” He said, “No, no, different guy—his name is Charlie Laughton. He teaches sensory work.” I thought, I’m lost already.

I was pondering this when suddenly the bartender, who went by Cookie, got an angry look on his face. He got out from behind the bar and banged on the door of the men’s room. The next thing you know, he had hold of two scruffy young women by the collars of their leather jackets, and he was throwing them out. Cookie returned to his post at the bar, where seven or eight working stiffs were lined up, and the two women stood in front of that big, wide window in broad daylight and began passionately kissing. They were doing it so that everybody in the bar could see them. There was a rift I was witnessing right there between two separate worlds: the brazen young women outside who were the very essence of liberation, and the guys at the bar who were shell‐shocked by something they’d never seen in their lives. The sixties were coming.

I was introduced to Charlie Laughton at that same bar sometime later. The moment I set eyes on him, I thought, This guy is my kind of guy. He was about ten years older than me. He loved the poetry of William Carlos Williams, who came from Paterson, New Jersey, like he did. I enrolled at the Herbert Berghof Studio. I had no money, so I cleaned the hallways and the rooms where they had dance classes, and they gave me a scholarship.

By then, my mother had moved up to 233rd Street to live with her parents, and I had our apartment to myself. The rent was still thirty-eight dollars and eighty cents a month. But I had lost the Commentary job and I was broke. Charlie, who was married to an actress named Penny Allen, was broke, too, so he and I worked together as moving men. We moved office furniture and a lot of books. Our friend Matt Clark, who was in Charlie’s acting class, ran the moving operation. How does an actor prepare? He carries a refrigerator up the stairs.

In my free time, I became a voracious reader. Charlie turned me on to many novelists and poets I didn’t know. He would suggest various writers to check out and places to go, like the Forty‐second Street library for warmth and the Automat for sustenance. At the Automat, I could make a single cup of coffee last all morning, sitting there for five hours while I read my little books by the great authors. I would be reading “A Moveable Feast” and thinking, I don’t want to finish the pages, I like it here too much.

If the hour was late and you heard someone in your alleyway with a bombastic voice shouting iambic pentameter into the night, that was probably me, training myself on the famous Shakespeare soliloquies. I would bellow out monologues as I rambled through the streets of Manhattan. I’d do it by the factories, at the edges of town, places where no one was around. On those side streets, I didn’t need anyone’s permission to play Prospero, Falstaff, Shylock, or Macbeth. I grew to love Hamlet’s rogue-and-peasant-slave monologue so much that I started to use it at auditions. I would say to the director, “I know you have your pages that you want me to perform, but I have a little something that I’ve already prepared, if you don’t mind.” Usually they would give me a look that told me they were already finished with me.

Another young actor in Charlie’s class was a guy by the name of Martin Sheen. In one session, Marty did a monologue from “The Iceman Cometh,” and he blew the roof off. He was the next James Dean, as far as I was concerned. I got to be friends with him, and one day he said, “You know what my real name is, don’t you? Estevez.” He was half Spanish, and he came from Ohio, where he had a tough upbringing. He was one of ten kids in a working‐class family that was always struggling for money. He had tenacity and grit, and I could tell he was one of the best people I’d ever know.

Marty moved in with me in the South Bronx so we could split the rent. We worked together at the Living Theatre in Greenwich Village, where we cleaned toilets and laid down rugs for sets. The Living Theatre had been founded by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, two actors who started it in their living room in the nineteen-forties and eventually moved it to Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. They did the kind of shows that made you go home afterward and lock yourself in your room and cry for two days, staring at the ceiling. They helped forge Off Broadway theatre, whose success paved the way for Off Off Broadway, which made possible some of the shows I was doing Off Off Off Off Broadway. When I appeared in “Hello Out There,” by William Saroyan, we would put on sixteen performances a week at Caffe Cino on Cornelia Street, and then we’d pass the hat to what little audience was there, hoping to come away with a few dollars for a meal. It was our Paris in the early nineteen-hundreds, our Berlin in the nineteen-twenties. That was the spirit of the scene.

The author, far right, with family in the South Bronx, including his grandfather, James Gerardi, far left, and his mother, Rose Gerardi Pacino, second from right.Photograph courtesy the author / Mark Scarola

Sometimes one of Marty’s brothers would stay over at the Bronx apartment, or this guy Sal Russo from acting class who was going with a woman named Sandra. Her best friend was a musician with long dark hair and piercing eyes named Joan Baez, who would occasionally drop in, sit cross‐legged in a corner, and play her guitar. She hadn’t linked up with Bob Dylan yet, but we knew Joan was going places. I don’t believe she and I even exchanged hellos.

I heard that Cliffy was back in the neighborhood again. Both he and Bruce had enlisted in the Army. Bruce made it as far as his induction ceremony, when he got second thoughts and threatened to jump out a window, so they let him go. Cliffy, on the other hand, served for a few months, but of course he got in trouble and was thrown into the brig before being discharged. I knew there was no risk that I’d be drafted myself, because I was supporting my mother. Anyway, could you imagine me, that boy I was, going around saying, “Hup‐two‐three‐four”? I can do it in a play.

Cliffy had come out of the Army in even worse shape than he went in. He was on the needle and doing and saying all kinds of crazy stuff. He said he had been in the same platoon as Elvis Presley, and it turned out he actually had. He said he went to Canada, got a Catholic girl pregnant, and converted from Judaism so that he could marry her. Every time he stopped by my apartment, he would go into the bathroom to shoot up, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of other people he’d brought. Eventually I had to tell Cliffy he couldn’t come around anymore.

It was no surprise to anyone when he overdosed and died. It made me think of a story that he had told me. When he was in the brig, Cliffy said, he was watched by a guard, a Southerner who carried a .45 pistol. The guard would hold his pistol up just so and start saying ominous things about “the Jews.” In his Southern drawl, he would tell Cliffy, who was still Jewish at the time, “You know, I could just blow your head off and tell people you tried to escape. Would that be something to do?” He kept repeating it, day after day, until Cliffy finally turned to the guy and said, “Hey, man, you know what? You better kill me. Because if you don’t, when I get out of here, I’m gonna come back and kill you.” Cliffy may not have been the toughest guy I ever met, but he certainly was the most fearless.

It was Bruce who told me that my mother had overdosed. I came back to my apartment late one night to find a note on my door, saying that he had an urgent message for me. I went to his place; he lived with his parents in the building next door, and he took me into their kitchen and said, “Your mom’s in a lot of trouble. She’s really sick. You better go, man.” I jumped in a cab to 233rd Street.

Arriving at the building, I looked up and saw the lights on in my grandparents’ apartment. I went up the stairs, walked in the door, and there were my grandmother and grandfather, their eyes wet with tears. I was too late. My mother had died like Tennessee Williams would, choking while taking her own pills.

Some people thought that she had committed suicide, as she had tried to almost fifteen years earlier. But she left no note this time, nothing. She was just gone. That’s why I have always kept a question mark next to her death.

I’ll never forget the image of my grandfather the next morning, sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the room, nothing around him, crouched over with his head in his hands, almost between his legs. He just kept banging a foot on the floor. I’d never seen him that way. He didn’t speak, but I knew what he was saying. No.

I thought that maybe somehow I could have stopped it from happening. Therapy, financial security—these things could have helped my mother. I had known that one day I was going to be able to supply her with all that and more. It sounds like an Odets play, but it’s true.

here. Come with me.” I was stunned. But I didn’t go. I had moved out of the Bronx by that time and found a low‐rent rooming house in Chelsea for eight bucks a week. Something was driving me. I had to make it, because that was the only way I would survive this world. ���

This is drawn from “Sonny Boy: A Memoir.”Published in the print edition of the September 2, 2024, issue, with the headline “Early Scenes.”