Frank & Charli Read online

  Parsons called. I listened. I was not a carpenter or an engineer. I was an artist. and Mr. Vega helped me put together my portfolio. I was accepted that fall and moved into the spare room of my grandparents’ five-story walk-up on 167th Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. My bedroom window opened to the black-tarred roof of the building. I can still smell it. That is where I started to paint my own, totally original work.

  My first painting was a very detailed image of my left hand. I spent many days making it as realistic as I could, with skin tones, hair, blue veins, fingernails, and the small letter “F” tattoo that I had given myself with sewing needles and black India ink. People to this day ask what it means and I tell them it was a secret cult gang that I belonged to in high school, but that’s not true.

  Although I’d been accepted to Parsons, I of course had failed the written portion of the entrance exam. So I spent the first semester taking an English comprehension make-up course at the downtown New York University campus. Putting my own spin on it, I told everyone I was attending both Parsons and NYU. It sounded better. I worked my ass off, lassoing those dancing letters like a cowboy.

  Being accepted by Parsons was a big step. I was a sheltered kid from Brooklyn with no direction or reinforcement, except for a lot of love from my family. Now I was a free bird with a new life of art, sex, drugs, and jazz. Shedding the shackles of academia for art allowed me to express myself. My work spoke for me. And the better I got at it the more self-confidence I gained. One of the first courses I took was a figure painting class.

  I showed up to my first class brimming with my newfound confidence. The room was a large open area with thirty students sitting behind easels. Even if I had walked in with my eyes closed, I’d still have known it was a painter’s studio by the pungent smell of turpentine, mixed with undried oil paint, freshly primed gesso, and stretched linen canvas. The smell and feel of the classroom were far from my mind, though; in front of me was a naked woman sitting on a stool in the middle of the classroom, posing as if no one else was there. Today, I would describe her as Rubinesque. Back then I would have said she was fat.

  Even though I grew up on the fast streets of Brooklyn, my only exposure to women had been my cousins and the girls on the block my age or younger. I had definitely never seen a live nude woman with clumps of hair on her crotch and under her arms. It shocked the shit out of me.

  I stared, totally in a daze. The silence made me more uncomfortable, so I decided I’d be funny and controversial—something I would often do to camouflage my dyslexia-related insecurities. Very deadpan, I shouted out at the professor, “CAN I TRACE?”

  Everyone cracked up. The professor, however, did not even break a smile. He answered immediately: “You can trace … only if you make it better.”

  This was a lesson I would never forget. You have to make it better. I try to do this with everything I do, always making it better. Even if it’s just making a sandwich for one of my kids’ lunches, I am driven to try to do it better than it’s ever been done. At the time, I didn’t know how to do that. Colored oil paint in a tube was new to me. So was the big, white, blank canvas staring me in the face, not to mention this big, white, naked woman in the middle of the studio. Plus, I had never done any sketches as involved as this assignment was.

  Seeing that I was frozen, the professor walked over to me. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know what to do.”

  He handed me a brush and took my hand in his, guiding me to smear the bristles into a glob of burnt sienna. We painted that first stroke across the empty canvas together.

  “Now you do.”

  It was as simple as that. Make the first mark. If it sucks, make another one over it. Add and take away, until you and your art are left. I became the artist.

  One of my class projects started me on a road that followed me all over the world for many, many years. It required picking from a list of classic love stories, reading it, and interpreting it graphically. I chose “Tristan and Isalda.” Little did I know I would come across several Isaldas in my life. Any time they would tell me their name I always won them over by replying that my name is Tristan. It has worked every time. And it may not be over.

  Isalda the German Model at Mode nagazine. Isalda the Bolshoi Ballerina in Moscow.

  Isalda the Russian hooker.

  This is for sure: My years at Parsons exposed me to freedom, the arts, and their creators. It gave me a whole new perspective on life. Well, not new—it was the only perspective I had ever had.

  CHAPTER 2

  Drafted

  Several months after graduating from Parsons I got the dreaded letter all young men in those days feared.

  Selective Service Systems

  ORDER TO REPORT FOR INDUCTION

  The President of the United States

  To: Frank M. Yandolino Selective Service # 30 2 44 2318

  17 6th Avenue. Brentwood, New York

  Greetings:

  You are hereby ordered into the Armed Forces of The United States. Report at the lobby of the U.S. Post Office Main Street Brentwood, New York on November 5, 1966 at 6:30 AM for forwarding to an Armed Forces Induction Station at 39 Whitehall Street New York, NY.

  I can still see the day of my induction as clear as yesterday. It was dark, just before dawn, when I left my parents’ home on eastern Long Island and boarded a westbound bus for a two-hour trip to the US Army’s induction center.

  Artists and war do not mix. I went from painting beautiful hairy women to standing in line after line with not-so-beautiful hairy men. White Hall, as the induction center was called, was built in 1886 and had become a dilapidated eight-story building of red granite, sandstone, and red brick with small slit windows on the ground floor. Above the arched front entranceway was a decorative granite panel carved with a cannon, a mortar, a knight in chain mail armor, cannon balls, and a spear. It looked like had been done by a kid in a sandbox. Inside, it smelled like a gym locker room. The entire place had walls painted shades of drab pea green with gray floors and sterile white ceilings with black trim. Hand-painted cardboard signs hung everywhere, telling me what to do like lifeless little fascists.

  Gone were the Rubinesque big tits and furry bushes. Instead, I was surrounded by all sizes and colors of dicks, men and boys from every walk of life, with accents from every part of the country. All of us were now carrying the same thing: jars of piss. Standing in line, a doctor approached and requested I pull down my shorts. He grabbed my balls and said, “Turn your head and cough.” All I knew while standing in my underwear with my own urine in my hand was that this was not the path for me.

  “I gotta get out of here.”

  My father knew someone who knew someone who got me into the Army Reserve. I was sent to 42nd Street and 12th Avenue for training while awaiting my orders. Because of the enormity of the Vietnam draft, the Army had run out of uniforms, so I went to Reserve meetings in my dungarees and civilian clothes. After a few weeks, I was sent to summer camp, a two-week trip to Camp Drum, an Army training facility in Watertown, upstate New York—to learn how to survive in Vietnam by participating in simulated war games.

  When we got to camp, wouldn’t you know, they assigned me and five other recruits out of five hundred to become commandos. Two Special Forces commando trainers arrived in helicopters and laid out the plan of attack for invading the other trainees. They gave the five of us gas masks, tear gas, and smoke bombs, along with the standard-issued M1 Garand rifle. The only gun I had ever had before was a carpet gun, made out of a two-foot piece of two-by-four wood with stretched-out rubber bands strung together and held down by half of a wooden clothespin. It shot out a one-inch-square piece of linoleum tile. You always aimed for the other guy’s head, hoping to knock his eye out. I can still hear my mother: “Junior, stop that! You’ll knock his eye out.” Somehow, we never did.

  During our briefing we were told that all we had to do was wear a soft cap to designate ourselves a
s Special Forces Commandos for the war games. I instinctively put mine on backwards and tied a white handkerchief around my neck, wondering if this was all just some bad trip.

  As the games began, I took my defiant insubordination one step further. At times I took the cap off. I was starting to understand how the military mind worked. They expected me to not break the rules, presuming honor would prevail. They didn’t know I grew up in Brooklyn and live by the credo: if you didn’t grow up in Brooklyn, you didn’t go through basic training.

  In Brooklyn, you went to work immediately, always looking to get the edge, that little something different. You snooze you lose. No a’kees, olly olly oxen frees. Oops doesn’t count. All that stuff stays with you forever, gets embedded in your character and influences what you must change in order to evolve. But first you must run as fast as you can, yelling the Brooklyn attack chant “ee awk ee, ee awk eeeeee.” We’re not like those who were brought up in Queens or Long Island. We are Brooklyn.

  Not even the army can compare to growing up in Brooklyn, where I learned that rules are made to be broken, and that a little white lie applied at the right time is okay, or that bending the truth to your advantage is necessary to survive. The army didn’t count on me hiding my cap so the other troops wouldn’t know who I was. They were trained to look for guys in caps, and I didn’t fit the bill. It was just like when my mother used to make me wear the ugliest, stupidest, most embarrassing ear-flapped, make-believe, leather fake fur-lined hat, complete with chin strap. I stuck it in my shirt every day and I still don’t like hats.

  Off we trekked into the woods, preparing our attack. Both sides took the game very seriously. Several from our side were captured during the war simulation and even lightly beaten. Once the 12:00 p.m. siren sounded a truce was struck. We all returned to the main base for lunch.

  A lieutenant and I were walking back for our meal when we were jumped. I was hit with a rifle butt and we were detained. I didn’t realize that the lieutenant and I were the only two Special Forces left. These overzealous soldiers were trying to end the war games early by cheating. I hate cheaters.

  Strutting like peacocks, they marched us into a large command tent where all the brass sat eating. Our captors were there to claim victory to the soft-jowled men in ribbons and medals, but the lieutenant wasn’t done.

  “You still got those bombs?” he whispered. I nodded.

  “On the count of three … one … two … three. Gas!” he yelled.

  I rolled one of my tear gas bombs right down the center of the officer’s lunch table. We quickly slipped on our gas masks and made an easy escape from the sounds of coughing and gagging. I disappeared into the woods.

  For several hours, I haunted the base, randomly exploding and destroying things. Eventually, they sent out a helicopter. That’s when I heard that nefarious loudspeaker again.

  “PRIVATE YANDOLINO, YOU CAN COME OUT NOW. THE GAMES ARE OVER.”

  Bullshit! I didn’t trust them, so I continued to set things on fire, hide, and attack. After several more passes by the helicopter, I got tired of it all. I came out of the bush. They snapped a picture of me walking out in a haze of smoke, my gun at my side, white handkerchief around my neck á la John Wayne, my soft hat on backward.

  Ironically, it was that image that allowed me to grace my first magazine cover: the Army Times. I guess I took simulated war games pretty seriously. I really don’t like to play games, especially if someone cheats.

  Several months later my unit was called up for six months of basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, before moving on to Fort Knox, Kentucky. For their part, and perhaps in response to my newfound fame, the army sent me to cook school to continue my basic training.

  “Cook school,” I proclaimed. “Why? I graduated college for art and photography; at least make me a sign painter.”

  The sergeant was dead serious. “Son, someone has to feed our boys over there in ’Nam.” In basic training I met Joe Lombardo. He weighed about three hundred pounds and was unable to do any of the drills or exercises. The other soldiers constantly picked on him, and Joe was the target of all the drill sergeants. I believe they sensed something was very different about Joe. I overheard one of them use the word “queer.”

  I had no clue, just felt sorry for him. My brother James had faced the same ridicule growing up, from kids and adults alike, because he was very overweight. It made me crazy and still does. I deplore ignorance when people impose their ill-founded ideologies on others.

  Joe and I became great friends. He was one of the most creative, innovative people I’d ever met, which is truly saying a lot. This super-special lost soldier taught me it was cool to have fun at what you do, to set yourself free. That’s when I decided to let my freak flag fly.

  Many years later when Joe and I were in Paris working on Mode magazine we had a conversation about his personal sexual preference, and what it meant for him to be gay, being from an Italian family, starting out straight, coming out of the closet, meeting Joe’s girlfriend, Donna, going back in the closet. A key observation I have learned that people need to realize that being gay isn’t being a freak of nature or having some disease you can catch. It’s not something you become because of your upbringing or your environment. It’s not a choice. You are born gay, it is what you are, it is your genetics. From the beginning of time animals and humans have been bisexual. They are all on their own unique part on the spectrum of the four sexes, which I explain as something like this: straight men on one side and straight women on the other, with gay men and women in the middle sort of sharing a little from both sides. You may look masculine or feminine and inside be completely the opposite. Joe agreed with that theory. He was tormented by it all his life. Was he straight or gay? Feminine or masculine? Is it possible to be both? Well, he was. Unfortunately for the world, in the mid-eighties my good friend Joe died of AIDS.

  I had already decided the army was not for me, even before the army decided to ignore my artistic experience and make me a cook. Fortunately, they made Joe a cook, too. Together, we were sent to Fort Knox, put in charge of the field mess truck, and assigned to prepare for a very important retirement parade for a general. We were told to clean the truck and paint it to match all the other equipment—missile launchers, troop movers, etc. The entire base would be on hand to witness the spectacle.

  Joe and I went to work. We painted all night, finishing just in time to move the truck into position on the parade line. When the officers saw our work, all hell broke out; we had painted that food truck to the max. It was painted army drab green, with oversized white stars that covered most of the front doors. All the metal parts, bumpers, exhaust stacks, and tire rims that were once painted camouflage were newly painted gray and the black tires were now sporting whitewalls. Remember, Joe and I were artists first and foremost. Our mess truck was immediately pulled out of formation, yet the army still did not have the foresight to remove me from duty.

  As a cook, I immediately understood that I had leverage and grabbed the ball of opportunity again. I had the goods to barter. I traded food for privileges. There was a rumor traveling at light speed around the world about how you could get high by smoking dried banana peels. Even in the military there was a market for Mellow Yellow. As cook, I had access to thousands of banana peels. I took the skins up to the barracks roof and I lined the entire barracks roof with aluminum foil, laying them all out to dry in the sunshine. I sold each dried banana peel for a dollar. One problem: it did not work. All you got was a headache.

  My capitalist endeavor ended during a barracks inspection. The platoon leader saw the skins on the roof. I tried to blame it on the monkeys.

  “What monkeys?”

  Seems he knew that monkeys weren’t indigenous to Kentucky, so that excuse unfortunately didn’t fly. I ended up having to refund everyone’s dollars.

  My bartering did get me out of one of the worst military jobs, KP (Kitchen Police—the army’s way of telling you to do the dishes). Avoi
ding the second worst job, guard duty, wasn’t so simple.

  In the military, every so-called Swinging Dick had to serve on guard duty. It was not only your duty, but supposedly an honor. Before their shift, every soldier reporting for guard duty stood in line for inspection. Your uniform had to be clean and pressed with razor-sharp creases, boots shined to reflect your face. Most importantly, the brass belt buckle had to be shiny and spotless. The sergeant stood in front of your face, barking out questions. Answers had to be perfect, without hesitation.

  When my turn for guard duty came up, I shined my boots and my belt buckle. I even stood at attention. Yet I had no intention of standing out in the cold snow all night. So, when it came to the questions, I put my plan into action.

  “Son, what is your third General Order?”

  I stared straight ahead when I answered. “I don’t know, Sergeant.”

  His iron gray eyes widened. “What is your first General Order, soldier?”

  “I’m not sure, Sergeant.”

  Steam rose off his buzz cut. “Who is your Company Commander?”

  “Uh, General Fataché?”

  The sergeant stared at me for some time. I stared straight ahead as earnestly as I could.

  “Son, do you realize that you just failed inspection? You will not serve guard duty. What will your mother say?”

  “I’m sure she will not be happy, Sergeant.”

  “You’re dismissed, soldier. Return to your barracks. You are confined for the weekend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I saluted and jogged back to my barracks. Sprawled on my bed, no one could tell me what to do for two whole days. That’s about as close as it gets to paradise in the military.